Junior Actuarial Manager

Are you looking for the next step in your career as an actuarial manager?

Join our client in their Sandton offices and be part of their amazing team.

The successful Junior Actuarial Manager will manage a team of Actuarial Analysts that support the Business goals as set out by senior management by effectively modeling and monitoring business Actuarial solutions. This team will care take all company short term brands, products and distribution channels.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Business Requirements Identification

Elicit complex business requirements using a variety of methods such as interviews, document analysis, workshops, and workflow analysis to express the requirements in terms of target user roles and goals.

The effective management of pricing development, deployment and monitoring over all company STI brands, products, and distribution channels. Responsible for the management of key business metrics.

Analyze business requirements and identify root causes rather than reacting to symptoms. Business requirements need to be clearly documented within the scope of use, definitions and assumptions made.

Stakeholder Engagement

Identify, manage and collaborate with internal (Actuarial) and external (Business) stakeholders. Find out their needs/issues/concerns and reacting to these by leading and coordinating the development of stakeholder engagement plans to support the communication of business information and decisions.

Keep stakeholders informed and up to date with project/analysis delivery and provide clear and concise feedback to stakeholders.

Maintain measurable service levels on business requests and provide feedback that speaks to the business issue observed.

Be on time and prepared for meetings with Business.

Actuarial Modeling

Translate business objectives into clearly defined business cases, costs, and schedules to support growth in the business.

Develop, maintain and implement actuarial models and processes. Models need to be fit for purpose and able to estimate the reality accurately. Models (and any form of estimation) to clearly documented with the scope of use, definitions, data, and assumptions made.

Regularly monitor Models to ensure model performance and that they are communicated back to the business.

Data Collection & Analysis

Use data from a wide range of sources to analyze key themes and identify possible impacts on the business.

Recommendations could be technical or professional in nature.

Extract and verify data used for actuarial models.

Data/information to be reconciled against credible data sources (for example financials) to ensure the data is complete and accurate. Ensure definitions and assumptions are aligned to the problem statement.

Before data is used for analysis/modelling, the incumbent should review and acquire signed-off from the Senior Manager.

Model deployment and testing

Plan and deliver systems changes and manage the team on a day-to-day basis to meet project timelines and quality requirements. Engage with users to identify requirements and work with the team to design solutions.

Effective impact and sensitivity analysis to be performed before any deployment is done.

Translate results from the impact/sensitivity analysis to Business to provide insight and what various pricing changes will mean on profitability and policy growth over all brands and distribution channels.

Maintain and develop documentation on model/pricing to be deployed. Clearly state what needs to be deployed and how testing will be done to ensure the deployment is successful.

Ensure monitoring process are in place to measure the performance of the model/pricing.

Effective tracking of various pricing changes and cohorts.

Insights and Reporting

Contribute to the design and creation of reporting strategies and templates.

Lead execution of complex reports, identifying and interpreting complex patterns and trends, and translating those insights into actionable recommendations.

Create, present, and communicate high-impact data and analytics insights and recommendations to critical internal and external stakeholders.

Translate the monitoring results so that it can be understood and provide an ecosystem where data and data analysis is nimble and easy to access within the business.

Provide insight from monitoring to inform the Business of future modeling endeavors.

Ensure monitoring is accurate and complete and regularly validated against credible data sources.

Monitor data against actuals across all brands and distribution channels within the business.

Leadership and Direction

Communicate the actions needed to implement the function''s strategy and business plan within the team; explain the relationship to the broader organization''s mission, vision and values; motivate people to commit to theseBand to doing extraordinary things to achieve local business goals.

Performance Management

Manage and report on the performance of a substantial, diverse team, set appropriate performance objectives for direct reports or project / account team members and hold them accountable for achieving these; take appropriate corrective action where necessary to ensure the achievement of team / personal objectives.

Manage the development of pipelines and succession planning as well as performance scoring and management. This includes team administration, the setup of performance contracts and personal development plans to staff to achieve Business objectives.

Improvement / Innovation

Identify shortcomings in existing business practices, then suggest and implement improvements while developing and delivering projects or a work stream within the organization''s change management program. Involves working with guidance from senior colleagues.

Stay up to date with Business developments and develop solutions proactively with Business.

Maintain continuous development/research of modelling techniques and feature engineering to improve model estimates.

Ensure data processes are continuously maintained and kept up to date.

Operational Compliance

Monitor and review performance and behaviors within area of responsibility to identify and resolve non-compliance with the organization/actuarial profession policies and relevant regulatory codes and codes of conduct. Maintain standards of integrity and professionalism as set out by the Actuarial Society of South Africa.

Building Capability

Mentor and coach staff on a technical and professional front. Mentor and coach staff to develop data analysis, aggregation and cleaning skills and how to develop models and the review thereof.

SKILLS

Computer skills

Support business processes with comprehensive understanding and effective use of standard office equipment and standard software packages, while also providing guidance and training to others.

Actuarial and statistical software; Advanced Microsoft Office..

Modelling

Use comprehensive knowledge and guide and train others to develop financial and economic models for planning and monitoring purposes.

Numerical Skills

Use a comprehensive understanding of numerical concepts to perform mathematical operations such as report analysis and provide guidance and training to others.

Strong background in mathematics and statistics.

Data Collection and analysis

Provides technical guidance when required to analyze data trends for use in reports to help guide decision making.

Writing skills

Use clear and effective writing skills and provide technical guidance when required to express ideas, request actions and formulate plans or policies.

Verbal Communication

Use clear and effective verbal communications and provide technical guidance when required to express ideas, request actions and formulate plans or policies.

Presentation skills

Communicate with other people and provide technical guidance when required to speak in a clear, concise and compelling manner.

Analytical Processes

Provide technical guidance when required to support research schedules using appropriate analytical processes and procedures.

Assessment

Provide technical guidance when required to analyze data from multiple sources to draw appropriate conclusions and make suitable recommendations.

Action Planning

Provide technical guidance when required to develop appropriate plans or perform necessary actions based on recommendations and requirements.

Planning and Organizing

Provide technical guidance when required to plan, organize, prioritize and oversee activities to efficiently meet business objectives.

Compliance

Provide technical guidance when required to achieve full compliance with applicable rules and regulations in management and/or operations.

Actuarial Society of South Africa.

Data mining

Apply concepts of knowledge / skill and provide technical guidance when required.

Data Management

Provide technical guidance when required to acquire, organize, protect and process data to fulfill business objectives.

General Education

Bachelors / Honours degree in Actuarial Science or similar

Qualified or making good progression toward Actuarial qualification

EXPERIENCE

4 or more year’s actuarial experience within a Short-Term insurance environment

Managerial Experience

1 - 3 years’ experience of planning and managing resources to deliver predetermined objectives as specified by more senior managers