Join AXA Commercial and be part of an award-winning team! As the 2024 Insurance Award’s Commercial Lines Insurer of the Year, we're proud to be industry recognised for our ongoing commitment to supporting our broker partners and customers.

Building on our success, a key initiative for the future of AXA Commercial is enhancing our current teams with experienced, engaging, and forward-thinking Commercial Underwriters. This role provides a fantastic opportunity for you to build key foundations and shape the narrative, that will provide AXA the exposure and scope required for growth.

We're currently looking to further grow the Birmingham commercial team and bring to market a great opportunity to join us as a New Business Senior Underwriter in Property and Casualty.

The New Business Senior Underwriter plays a critical role in managing the profitability and income of the branch, owning the financial results for designated accounts and brokers. The role demands a high level of influence on the Underwriting team, increasing the ability to collaborate with a range of stakeholders and developing the technical and trading capability of the branch.

The role encompasses many opportunities to contribute to the development and success of the team, not just from a growth and profitability perspective but driving service excellence to our customers. Ensuring close collaboration is supported internally across the teams will be an important focus area, as this will enable the team to be set up for success, by engaging and building key relationships with the brokers and stakeholders.

What you'll be doing: 

• We’ll equip you with the technical skills for tomorrow: It’s our job to support you in becoming an expert who has ownership over their work. We want you to be confident that you can make an impact by helping our customers. We ask ourselves what we can do today that will help us in the future. That’s why we offer continuous development to help our colleagues become experts in tomorrow.
• Build a career that’s as dynamic as the market you work in: We’re on a journey of transformation, so we’re investing in new technology that enables us to help our people and businesses thrive.
• Shape your career one decision at a time: We’ll support you to progress through the business and are committed to developing talent. We do this with training and tailored development plans.
• Act as the face of AXA in presenting propositions for larger Mid-Market and Mid-Corporate risks, based on industry knowledge and technical underwriting expertise, subject to the scale and complexity of the case.
• Work with Trading Underwriters to negotiate coverage, wordings and pricing that differentiate AXA to meet customer needs.
• Proactively develop a robust pipeline of Mid-Market and Mid-Corporate qualified growth opportunities leveraging both client and broker relationships, ensuring pipeline is effectively managed and realised.
• Lead and fully embed the large case management process for new business.
• Develop and build collaborative broker relationships, sometimes client, across the Region, taking full ownership for the generation and placement of profitable commercial business from self-sourced.
• Underwrite profitable new business, in line with AXA established underwriting controls and practices and act as a referral point in branch across New Business and, at times, renewals.
• Develop and maintain a quality distribution strategy and communication plan with key influential brokers to ensure financial KPIs achieved.

Although the role has no Direct reports, the Senior Underwriter plays a key role in developing and supporting the performance of the team Underwriters. 

At AXA we work smart, empowering our people to balance their time between home and the office in a way that works best for them, their team and our customers. You'll work at least 60% of your week away from home, either at one of our office locations, visiting clients or attending industry events.

Due to the number of applications we expect to receive for this role, we reserve the right to close this advert earlier than the listed closing date to ensure we’re able to effectively manage interest. Therefore, if you’re interested in joining us at AXA, please don’t hesitate to apply.

What you’ll bring:

• Keep an open mind: Keen to learn and challenge the status quo, able to approach tasks from different perspectives while focusing on helping colleagues and customers.
• Stay curious: You’ll be perceptive of what our customers and the market want, and bring that knowledge into your work, whilst making the most of AXA’s development opportunities.
• Be a team player: Able to use your unique skills and knowledge to collaborate with your colleagues, take accountability and discover new ways of doing thing.
• Technical underwriting expertise in a commercial insurance environment.
• Sound understanding of insurance market and processes across commercial lines insurance operations.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, through written and verbal communication skills.
• Proven experience in decision making on a wide range of technical underwriting scenarios within a Commercial environment.
• Coaching and development skills within in a similar environment and experience of working in teams and successful record of delivering results.
• Strong trading capability – commercial awareness, negotiation skills, ability to build strong broker relationships.
• Pragmatic decision maker with good analytical and numerical reasoning skills.
• Strong analytical skills with proven experience of account monitoring and action planning.
• Excellent risk assessment and risk management skills.

As a precondition of employment for this role, you must be eligible and authorised to work in the United Kingdom. 

This position has been defined as an Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) role under the IDD regime which means that in addition to pre-employment screening checks, the successful candidate will be subject to background screening every 4 years with an annual declaration in interim years.

What we offer:

At AXA UK, we’re appreciative of the people who work for us and our rewards package is reviewed regularly to reflect that. You can expect to receive:

• Competitive annual salary
• Annual company & performance-based bonus
• Contributory pension scheme (up to 12% employer contributions)
• Life Assurance (up to 10 x annual salary)
• 25 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays
• Opportunity to buy up to 5 extra days leave or sell up to 3 days leave
• AXA employee discounts
• Gym benefits

To apply, click on the ‘apply for this job’ button, you’ll then need to log in or create a profile to submit your CV. We’re proud to be an Equal Opportunities Employer and don’t discriminate against employees or potential employees based on protected characteristics. If you have a long term condition or disability and require adjustments during the application or interview process, we’re proud to offer access to the AXA Accessibility Concierge. For our support, please send an email to mel.ainscough@axa-insurance.co.uk.

#LI-Hybrid

Who we are:

AXA Commercial protects businesses, from multinationals to micro start-ups, giving them the confidence to thrive. We’re currently making our biggest ever investment to develop the expertise and skills we need to be the best. We’re a vibrant community where everyone is supported to learn, develop, and take ownership of their work.