Role Title: Portfolio Underwriter
Department: DAP - Autofollow
Location: London
Type: Permanent
About the Role:
We are building a new autofollow portfolio proposition in the Lloyd's / London Market, starting with Property and expanding into a genuinely multi-line business over time, with Financial Professional Lines (FinPro) identified as the next priority through several existing broker-led initiatives.
This is a founding hire into a two-person leadership team reporting directly into the Head of Autofollow. You will be one of the first people in the door, and your role is to hold the pen and put the portfolio strategy into action — underwriting and onboarding business through a systematic, data-led, algorithmic approach, rather than assessing risks purely on an individual, case-by-case basis.
We are open to candidates from underwriting, actuarial, data science or portfolio management backgrounds. What matters most is the ability to learn fast, work across a wide variety of problems, and make sound commercial decisions at pace, using data and automation as core underwriting tools rather than an afterthought. Given the pace and scope of this build, you'll need to be equally comfortable negotiating with a broker one moment and interrogating a bordereau or pricing output the next.
This is a genuine opportunity to shape a market-leading proposition from the ground up, with a clear path to owning a sub-portfolio as the business scales.
About the Department & Team:
- Our new autofollow team sits within our Delegated Practice Group consisting of underwriting, operations, claims and actuarial into a single centre of excellence.
- Agile work environment – office and homeworking
- The chance to be a part of the cutting edge of the Lloyd’s and London market as we help pioneer the digitisation of this 300 year old industry.
Key Responsibilities:
Strategy and Planning
- Contribute underwriting and market insight to the design of the target portfolio shape for both short-tail and long-tail lines of business.
- Help shape the algorithmic trading strategy, providing real-world underwriting perspective to ensure rules, triggers and parameters are commercially sound and market-credible.
- Identify attractive opportunities for portfolio growth, based on market dynamics, broker relationships, and emerging themes across target lines of business.
- Support the development of underwriting frameworks and authorities that enable disciplined, scalable growth through facilities, delegated structures and broker partnerships.
- Help build the case for expansion into new lines of business, bringing underwriting credibility and broker relationships to support entry into areas.
- Contribute to the long-term structure of the team, including how future sub-portfolios and hires should be organised as the proposition grows.
Delivery
- Hold underwriting authority for the autofollow portfolio, underwriting business in line with the agreed algorithmic strategy, business plan and personal authority.
- Lead the onboarding of new business, facilities and broker/coverholder relationships, ensuring underlying data, structures and controls meet the standards required for a systematic, autofollow trading model.
- Execute and refine the rules-based trading strategy in partnership with the team, applying underwriting judgement to challenge, calibrate and improve the systematic approach based on real market experience.
- Negotiate commercial terms, structures and parameters with brokers and coverholders for new and renewal business, facilities and delegated arrangements.
- Assess new opportunities at portfolio level, balancing growth, profitability, diversification and volatility management rather than underwriting purely risk-by-risk.
- Use data, bordereaux and performance analytics to inform underwriting decisions, monitor portfolio performance and identify emerging trends or issues requiring corrective action.
- Apply AI and modern tooling to speed up submission triage, risk assessment, data quality checks or portfolio monitoring. We want to hear about how you've genuinely used AI to improve your own underwriting or workflow, not just used it superficially.
- Build strong relationships with brokers, coverholders and capacity partners, acting as a credible, commercially astute face of the proposition in the market.
- Support the onboarding of new lines of business, starting with FinPro, applying underwriting expertise to help translate market and broker opportunities into tradeable, systematic structures.
- Ensure business is underwritten and onboarded in line with governance, control and regulatory standards, working closely with the Portfolio Strategist, Actuarial, Claims and Operations.
- Provide underwriting input and challenge into portfolio reviews, escalating areas of concern and recommending remediation, repricing or restructuring where required.
Policy, Process and Procedures
- Compliance with all applicable internal and external laws, regulations, policies, procedures and guidance.
- Adhere to underwriting standards, instructions and best practice methodology in order to minimise risk
- Comply with any reinsurance requirements in accordance with stated risk tolerances and to deliver against business plan.
- Adherence to all relevant regulatory requirements forms part of your role, and the demonstration of behaviours as set out in the Conduct Risk Policy, as they relate to your role, is core to LSM's commitment to placing customers at the centre of our business and behaving with integrity. LSM expects you to understand your responsibilities relating to all regulatory and internal requirements, and to proactively demonstrate compliance with these requirements and behaviours at all times. These requirements include Solvency II, fair treatment of customers, Financial Crime, Data Protection, Conflicts of Interest, and Whistleblowing.
Skills and Experience:
- Strong underwriting background, ideally with experience underwriting through delegated authority, facilities, treaty, algorithmic or other portfolio-based structures, though candidates from actuarial, data science or portfolio management backgrounds with strong commercial instincts will also be considered.
- Track record of holding underwriting authority and making sound, commercially grounded underwriting decisions at pace.
- Strong ability to analyse portfolio performance using bordereaux, exposure, pricing and claims data, and translate this into underwriting action.
- Practical, hands-on experience using AI tools to improve underwriting, triage or portfolio workflows be ready to talk through specific examples of how you've applied this in your own work.
- Experience with, or strong interest in, algorithmic, rules-based or systematic approaches to underwriting, as distinct from purely case-by-case risk assessment.
- Strong broker and coverholder relationship management skills, with the ability to negotiate commercial terms and build durable market relationships.
- Comfortable using data and digital tools to support underwriting decisions (e.g. Excel, SQL, Power BI, Tableau or equivalent); coding ability is an advantage but not essential.
- A genuine appetite for variety and pace — comfortable moving between hands-on underwriting, broker negotiation and portfolio-level analysis as priorities shift in a fast-growing team.
- Demonstrated ability to learn new lines of business quickly, given the intended expansion beyond Property into FinPro and other classes.
- Entrepreneurial mindset, with the ambition and capability to grow into a sub-portfolio leadership role as the proposition scales.
About Liberty Specialty Markets (LSM)
Liberty Specialty Markets is part of Global Risk Solutions and the broader Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, which is a leading global insurer. We offer a breadth of world-class insurance and reinsurance services to brokers and insureds in all major markets.
Our people are key to our success. That is why "Put People First" is one of the five Liberty values which unite us as a global organisation. We bring this to life for our colleagues through:
- Offering a vibrant and inclusive environment and committing to their career development.
- Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Our Inclusion Matters framework and employee-led networks strengthen the diversity of our workforce and our inclusive environment.
- Reinforcing that collaborating together to share our unique perspectives help us make better decisions, deliver innovative solutions and pursue our ambitious goals.
- A supportive culture, which includes promoting a healthy work-life balance and working flexibly.
For more information, please follow the links below:
https://www.libertyspecialtymarkets.com/gb-en/careers/working-for-us
https://www.libertyspecialtymarkets.com/gb-en/careers/diversity-equity-and-inclusion
