Manager: Underwriting

Job Advert Summary

(Land Bank) is South Africa’s only specialist agricultural bank established in 1912, the bank’s sole objective is to serve South African commercial and emerging farmers and bring specially designed financial services within their reach. These services enable farmers to finance land, equipment, improve assets and obtain production credit. The Land Bank provides financial services that have moved with the times and continues to provide services to agri‑business and constantly reviews its offerings to ensure that they match the needs of an industry.

As change has swept across the sector in South Africa the socio‑economic makeup of agriculture has altered, bringing new entrants from historically disadvantaged backgrounds on to the land, these new farmers, facing the challenges of establishing sustainable agri‑businesses across the agricultural value chain, Land Bank has been a commercial lifeline offering appropriately designed financial products that facilitate personal and commercial viability in a sector that is vital to the sustainability of South Africa and its people.

MAIN PURPOSE OF THE JOB

Oversee underwriting, reinsurance, policy administration and portfolio management of non‑life insurance business to contribute to the achievement of financial objectives of the organisation.

• Make authoritative decisions about technical underwriting and business enhancement solutions that would significantly improve business performance.
• Develop and maintain underwriting guidelines aligned to the risk appetite of the business.
• Develop processes and procedures to ensure that business is underwritten in accordance with set standards and rates.
• Demonstrate a high degree of knowledge regarding underwriting quantitative and qualitative tools.
• Review, benchmark and update policy cover, policy wording, general terms and conditions.
• Responsible for monitoring profitability as measured by loss ratio improvement.
• Complete assessment of claim trends and services, including analyse all necessary historical account information.
• Determine renewal terms including required premium level and policy plan change recommendations and deliver complete renewal package to Sales according to organisational department guidelines.
• Accountable for the accuracy and completeness of all renewal data.
• Participate in interdepartmental discussions between Sales, Claims and Reinsurance on renewal business issues and make recommendations regarding policy plan provisions related and administrative procedures.
• Ensure adherence to organisational policies, practices and procedures.
• Maintain and annually update the underwriting risk policy.
• Oversee staffing, supervision, training, coaching, mentoring, structuring of the underwriting function for effective service delivery.

• Responsible for structuring of reinsurance programmes for all lines of business.
• Prepare annual reinsurance renewal packs.
• Oversee reinsurance optimization.
• Oversee the accuracy and completeness of all reinsurance data.
• Oversee the accurate submission of reinsurance accounts.
• Approve all facultative reinsurance placement.
• Maintain strong relationships with reinsurance partners.

• Manage underwriting performance of outsourced and binder mandates in line with internal guidelines and company processes.
• Initiate corrective actions where required to maintain quality standards.
• Provide integrated long‐term solutions and strategies for dynamic portfolio management to deliver profitable growth.
• Report monthly on binderholder performance against set targets and budgets.
• Provide management with reliable and accurate ad‐hoc information for decision making.
• Establish controls to ensure that all aspects of the binder agreement are adhered to.
• Effective relationship management and timely escalation of issues.
• Ensure that all policies and procedures are maintained to enable compliance measurement.

• Develop a product development framework that will drive the development and implementation of new products and innovation.
• Continuously monitor existing products to identify gaps and the…