Brief Role Description

This position is Career Level 29P, located in Reston, VA, with a Role Classification of Hybrid.

Role Summary

The Actuary and Underwriting Lead plays a pivotal role in shaping the insurance portfolio through expert risk assessment, pricing strategy, and financial modeling. This position blends deep actuarial knowledge with hands-on underwriting leadership to ensure sound decision-making and profitability across insurance products. This role requires a strategic thinker with strong analytical skills, deep insurance knowledge, and the ability to lead cross-functional teams in a dynamic environment.

Role Responsibilities within this Role

Actuarial & Analytical Duties (60%):

• Understand and provide effective challenge on Pricing and Reserve calculation for Auto Insurance products
• Collaborate with Risk Management, Accounting and senior management in establishing adequate loss provisions for Insurance products
• Engage with CFO, VP of Finance, Chief Risk Officer, Accounting, Risk Management, Brand executives and external auditors to gain acceptance on the loss and reserve forecasts. Provide technical and operational support to auditors to ensure successful audit close.
• Lead enhancements and automation of data structure, integrity, validation, and reporting.
• Extract and analyze data from data warehouse to enhance underwriting, pricing, reserves, and prediction of future issues and trends. 
• Provide all actuarial inputs for actual and forecast income recognition.
• Update and report on actual experience compared to forecast and pricing.  Recommend and drive actions to drive on-target results.
• Support IFRS 17 reporting and analysis.

Underwriting Responsibilities (20%):

• Develop and implement underwriting guidelines and procedures to ensure consistency and compliance.
• Collaborate with Front-End Staff, Accounting, Sales, and others to influence acceptability criteria and product structure.
• Ensure regulatory compliance with insurance laws and internal standards.

Leadership & Strategic Oversight (20%):

• Lead and mentor analysts, providing training and performance feedback.
• Set strategic direction for underwriting and risk management aligned with company goals.
• Implement process improvements to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and turnaround times.

Qualification requirements

• 10+ years minimum, with a strong background in actuarial science.
• At least 5 years working as an actuary in an actuarial role in the Insurance industry. 
• Desired: 3 years working in Auto Insurance Industry with automobile property and/or breakdown exposures.

Required Education:

• ACAS designation
• Bachelor’s Degree in a quantitative discipline: Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Operations Research.

Desired Education:

• Master’s Degree in related field
• Professional certifications such as CPCU, FCAS, or ASA 
• Experience with insurance underwriting and/or product management

Required Skills:

• Support a robust pricing and/or reserving review process for insurance business, including both standard actuarial techniques and advanced modeling.
• Proficiency in data analysis tools, underwriting software, and statistical packages.
• Develop indications and communicate them to Actuarial Management and Senior Leadership.
• Work collaboratively as a part of the broader Pricing and/or Reserving process.
• Develop and communicate business analytics to Senior Leadership.
• Foster innovation within the team and across the broader organization.
• Support development of themselves and other associates in an actuarial capacity and according to VCI vision and mission statement.
• Excellent Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint skills.
• Lead and direct the work of others.
• Ability to conduct large scale projects and research through all stages: concept formulation, definition of metrics, determination of appropriate methodology, research evaluation and final research report.
• Specialized ability to communicate highly technical subjects to the senior executives and others who have limited background in mathematics or statistics.
• Analytical and conceptual thinking – ability to understand business problems and develop data-driven solutions.

Desired Skills:

• FCAS designation or actively pursuing.
• Ability to build models using open-source software (e.g. R, Python), experience in distributed statistical computing preferred.
• Strong experience extracting, cleaning, modeling, and visualizing data to generate actionable insights and predictive solutions.
• Actuarial pricing and reserving experience.
• Experience mentoring and/or directing junior team members.