Head of Pricing

Canada Life UK looks after the retirement, investment and protection needs of individuals, families and companies. We help to build better futures for our customers, our intermediaries and our employees by operating as a modern, agile and welcoming organisation.
Part of our parent company Great-West Lifeco, Canada Life UK has operated in the United Kingdom since 1903. We have hundreds of respected and supported employees committed to doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues.
Canada Life UK is transforming to create a more customer-focused business by providing our customers with expertise on financial and tax planning, offering home finance and annuities propositions, and providing collective fund solutions to third party customers.
The role holder will develop and lead a commercially focused pricing team covering all Individual Annuity and ERM products. Ensuring that all pricing models are driving good customer outcomes, ensuring fair value. They will also be responsible for ensuring the pricing models and driving commercial value for the Retirement business.
The role holder will be expected to collaborate with other areas key functions to ensure that the impacts of Pricing assumptions are understood and agreed. They will be expected to lead on pricing decisions across the Retirement product lines and be able to clearly articulate the commercial impacts of all changes.
They will manage, motivate, and develop a team of Pricing professionals, ensuring compliance with all corporate policies and standards.
They will be expected to present at a senior level (Boards and Committees) on pricing decisions and commercial impacts, using strong influencing skills to drive best value for Retirement business and CLUK.
What you'll be accountable for:

• Lead a team of Pricing professionals, including qualified Actuaries and Students that are responsible for the pricing of individual annuities and equity release mortgages. This includes recruitment, coaching and development, day to day management. Creating an environment of continual development and improvement. Building a Commercial and entrepreneurial culture.
• Develop regular reporting and analysis to provide senior executives with an ongoing view of the Retirement market and financial opportunities. Building dynamic models that provide reporting on the financial, commercial and customer impacts of Pricing changes. Engaging with other areas of the business to understand impacts of Pricing changes.
• Develop, gain approval for and execute pricing initiatives for individual annuities and lifetime mortgages to improve sales, competitiveness, capital efficiency and profitability.
• Review and produce Actuarial Reports, including Pricing reports, and Statements, providing appropriate comments/feedback to ensure the appropriate issue is dealt with effectively.
• This includes pricing of ERM's for other parts of the Group (i.e. Canada).
• Provide support to the Managing Director of Retirement on Commercial modelling and market dynamics. Working with the Retirement SLT on the Commercial strategies for Retirement products and propositions.
• Building strong and collaborative working relationships with Canadian colleagues, developing and leading effective pricing frameworks for ERM enabling timely decision making across the group.
• Act as subject matter expert and lead business project work streams as required by the development schedule.
• To oversee the appropriateness of reinsurance and their treaties

What you'll be responsible for:
Responsible for commercial and fair value pricing individual annuities and equity release mortgages, this includes:

• Management of the production and review of regular pricing reports in accordance with Canada Life's standards and policies.
• Management and responsibility for the ongoing quotes process.
• Liaising with corporate actuarial and risk function to ensure appropriate oversight takes place and is evidenced.
• Management of the development and maintenance of new pricing models in accordance with the Technical Actuarial Standards (where relevant) and End User Computing.
• Working with SLT colleagues to build and execute a commercially driven retirement strategy.
• Leading on the development of dynamic pricing models and reporting

Responsible for ensuring that capital requirements are fully understood and reflected within pricing (SII, Partial Internal Model, LICAT).
Management of the production and review of experience studies and development of Pricing, projection or valuation assumptions where relevant.
Responsible for working alongside Investments team (Asset Management) to ensure that the asset strategy for individual annuity new business is effective, including supporting the partial internal model and use of equity release mortgages.
Monitor the market landscape for the relevant products and ensure a comprehensive understanding of competitors' pricing strategies and tactical positioning.
Research and analyse internal and external data sources, develop models, analytical tools and techniques to provide insight into competitor pricing.
Responsible for oversight of Pricing MI, including working with the distribution teams to expand and fully understand MI that is available.
Keeping abreast of industry issues and developments to ensure the business processes and strategies are in line with the industry.
Manage, develop and motivate a team of Pricing professionals, including Actuaries and Actuarial trainees in order to optimise the performance of the team in line with the Division's objectives. Develop the skills and knowledge of the team so that they have the expertise to achieve the business requirements, as well as maximising individual development.
Building a commercial culture across Retirement, actively seeking out suitable commercial opportunities that work alongside CLUK strategies and goals.
Provide appropriate support to managers and others to implement recommendations/facilitate change to support the requirements of the business.
Authorisation for approving Individual Annuity transactions in line with CLL Governance framework.
What you'll bring to the role:

Commercially driven manager, with experience of building high performing teams.

Knowledge of UK Individual Annuity and Equity Release Mortgage markets.

Analysing and reasoning skills, to reach sound and defensible conclusions / recommendations based on data but being pragmatic as situation and needs dictate.

Understanding of actuarial techniques and modelling. The ability to apply these skills and techniques to solve business challenges. Stron