Head of Risk Pricing - Net Pricing

About Marshmallow

We started Marshmallow when we found out how unfair insurance prices are for people who move to the UK. All because the industry hasn’t given this huge cohort of people a second thought, and isn’t set up to price them properly. 

We saw an opportunity to do things differently, so we made it our mission to back the ones who step outside the norm. Since we started, we’ve helped 100,000s of people get a fairer deal on their car insurance. Using technology, we serve people who are often overlooked by financial services companies, solving important problems for people who need it most. 

We know there are millions of marginalised customers out there. And we know that they face unique problems that most companies aren’t even aware of. We believe that our future is helping these people by learning about their experiences and building our company around their needs. And there are strong signs that there’s a need for a company like us. Earlier this year, we hit profitability, which is a huge milestone, but the most exciting thing is that we’re only just getting started.

How we work

We’re really proud of the culture we’ve created. We push for progress every day because we know that we’ll only hit big milestones by taking lots of smaller steps. We’re always open to helping our teammates, sharing our ideas, experience and knowledge to solve problems together. We take risks, think creatively and experiment relentlessly to meet our customers’ needs, and never pass the blame when things go wrong. We encourage people at all levels to take ownership of their work and to be bold in challenging how we do things. Everyone has a voice and the opportunity to make an impact. 

And autonomy and ownership are only possible with clear direction. That’s why we collaborate to do in-depth planning twice a year, and make sure we leave with clear goals and objectives that flow from top to bottom. To make sure we’re as aligned as possible across functions, most of our work rolls up into four tribes: Acquisition, Retention, Claims and Pricing, Underwriting & Fraud. Each tribe has multiple teams embedded in it, working cross-functionally to do great work.

We’re so excited for all of the challenges up ahead, and we need more people to help us tackle them! If life at Marshmallow sounds like it could be for you, explore our culture handbook or read our blog to find out more.

Pricing at Marshmallow

This role will sit in the Risk Pricing Team, reporting into the Pricing and Underwriting Director and managing a team of pricing data scientists and analysts. The team is responsible for managing our loss ratio, underwriting footprint and growth targets. This means that the Risk Pricing Team is integral to driving the business forwards. But you’ve probably read that all before! So what’s new?

We work in a very different way to most pricing teams that you might be familiar with. Everyone in Pricing has the potential to make a massive contribution to the business, so we all take ownership, move fast, innovate and deliver changes to our rates at high frequency.

A fantastic aspect of working at Marshmallow is that we have the backing of our senior leadership team to make decisions and take action autonomously. We’re the masters of our own destiny and we’re aren’t tied down with vast amounts of red tape! We analyse, implement, learn and iterate rate changes before most pricing teams have had their Shreddies.

You’ll also be excited to know that we don’t just churn out GLMs all day. As part of a leading data organisation, supported by silky smooth pipelines and end-to-end ownership, we build exceptional pricing and fraud models using the latest modelling techniques. We know first-hand what a powerful combination this is!

We work alongside a bunch of amazing engineers who ensure we can implement our decisions quickly. We also have access to huge amounts of data. We don’t just mean your standard policy, claims and quote data. Our engineers spend their lives building APIs to third parties so that we know more about our customers than any of our competitors.

All of this means that you’ll have access to as much data as you can handle, the freedom to be creative, the backing of senior leaders to make decisions, and the ability to see your ideas implemented rapidly. And on top of all of that, we’re a pretty fun group to hang around with!

What you’ll be doing

• Overseeing a technical pricing team that deliver claims analysis, claims modelling and optimisation modelling using open-source software such as Python.

• Building and leading a team of pricing analysts and data scientists, scaling and up-skilling this team as we grow.

• Being jointly responsible for delivering our planned revenue and loss ratio targets (along with the Acquisition and Retention tribe leads, and the Head of Retail Pricing).

• Being responsible for processes to build and maintain best-in-class pricing models including both claims modelling and market models.

• Setting the strategic direction of the risk pricing team, identifying the tools, skills, infrastructure etc required to deliver a best-in-class technical pricing function.

• Setting the priorities for the risk pricing team which will enable Marshmallow to deliver substantial revenue growth whilst protecting the loss ratio.

• Being responsible for determining the culture within the team, establishing an environment where analysts are comfortable taking controlled risks, and also where commerciality is at the forefront of analysts’ minds at all times.

• Working directly with our Pricing Engineering function to implement pricing proposals in near real-time, and enhancing our pricing platform capability for the future.

• Setting expected quality control standards in analysis, infrastructure and reporting.

• Providing analytical support in ongoing relationships with reinsurers, regulators and other partners.

• Working with other technical teams on longer-term R&D projects.

• Engaging with non-technical teams across the business, to ensure buy-in for your vision and understand business needs

Who are you?

• You drive growth by identifying new analytical opportunities and then delivering these

• You take into consideration the commercial and financial implications of your work

• You motivate and collaborate with others from within and outside of Pricing, seeking to identify dependencies, disagreements and plans to ensure long-term alignment.

• You can ingest and filter complex concepts, both up to stakeholders and down to your team.

• You take ownership of delivery and effectively balance analytical rigour with pace of delivery

• You can successfully manage a range of stakeholders to enable key decisions to be taken, balancing trade-offs and negotiating disagreements. 

• You can form a long-term vision for the future of pricing, in terms of technical skills, platform capability and culture.

• You inspire pricing data scientists and analysts to deliver their best work, taking ownership of their own projects and bringing actionable changes to the business.

What skills are we looking for from you?

• Significant experience interrogating data and conducting pricing analysis within Python & SQL or similar environments

• Significant experience building GLMs, GBMs and other claims models within Python or similar environments

• Prior experience in managing a small team of analysts/data scientists in a technical pricing function.

• At least 5 years of experience working in pricing, ideally within general insurance

Perks of the job

• Hybrid working - Spend 3 days a week with your team in our collaborative London office 🏢

• Competitive bonus scheme - designed to reward and recognise high performance 🌟

• Flexible benefits budget - £50 per month to spend on a Ben Mastercard meaning you get your own benefits budget to spend on things you want. Whether that’s subscriptions, night classes (puppy yoga, anyone?), the big shop or a forest of houseplants. Pretty much anything goes 💰

• Sabbatical Leave - Get a 4-week fully paid sabbatical after being with us for 4 years 🏝️

• Work From Anywhere - 4 weeks work from anywhere to use, with no need to come to the office 🛫

• Mental wellbeing support – Access therapy and mental health sessions through Oliva 💚

• Learning and development – Personal budgets for books and training courses to help you grow in your role. Plus 2 days a year - on us! - to further your skillset 🤓

• Private health care - Enjoy all the benefits Vitality has to offer, including reduced gym memberships and discounts on smartwatches 🏥

• Medical cash plan - To help you with the costs of dental, optical and physio (plus more!)

• Tech scheme - Get the latest tech for less 🖥

Plus all the rest; 25 days holiday (+ bank holidays), pension, cycle to work scheme, monthly team socials and company-wide socials every month!

Our Process

We break it up into 4 stages:

• Initial call with a member of our Talent Acquisition team (30 mins)

• A past-experience interview & competency interview (60 mins)

• A culture interview to check that your work style fits our processes and values (60 mins)

We’ll let you know if you’re invited to an interview or not. But, as a small team with a lot of applications to consider, we can’t give individual feedback on each application

Everyone belongs at Marshmallow

At Marshmallow, we want to hire people from all walks of life with the passion and skills needed to help us achieve our company mission. To do that, we're committed to hiring without judgement, prejudice or bias.

We encourage everyone to apply for our open roles. Gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or background does not affect how we process job applications.

We're working hard to build an inclusive culture that empowers our people to do their best work, have fun and feel that they belong.

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