Head of Underwriting

Head of Underwriting - Johannesburg, Brokerage 

The Opportunity: Our client is a leading, home-grown South African brokerage punching well above their weight and competing directly with global players. 

With a Gross Written Premium exceeding R1 billion, they are stable, nimble, and innovative. 

They are now seeking a strategic and commercially-minded underwriting leader to architect, build, and lead a sophisticated technical underwriting and risk placement function. 

This is a unique opportunity to move beyond traditional management and run a specialist underwriting business within a business, with full ownership of your budget, and operations.

Position Overview: As the Head of Underwriting, you will be the firm's senior technical expert, responsible for the strategic placement of the most significant and complex risks. 

You will take an existing team and transform it into a commercially astute, client-facing unit. 

Your mandate is to design the strategies, foster the market relationships, and instil the analytical rigour required to structure optimal risk solutions for clients with asset bases in the hundreds of billions, navigating protracted engagement cycles that can last up to 12 months.

Key Responsibilities:

• Architect the firms technical broking and market placement strategy, ensuring optimal terms and coverage for their largest clients.
• Lead, mentor, and restructure the underwriting team, embedding a culture of deep critical analysis and a consultative, Account Executive-style approach.
• Personally lead high-stakes, face-to-face negotiations with insurer markets and key clients.
• Act as the lead technical presenter in engagements with C-suite executives, boards of state-owned enterprises, unions, and central banks.
• Serve as the ultimate technical authority on complex risk structures, including reinsurance, self-insurance, contingencies, and aggregate funds.
• Drive the growth of the business by providing sophisticated technical support throughout complex and lengthy client acquisition processes.

Essential Requirements:

• A demonstrable track record of having previously built, restructured, and scaled a high-performance technical underwriting/broking function.
• Deep experience gained within a major insurance brokerage is non-negotiable.
• Extensive short-term commercial insurance experience, with a focus on structuring solutions for very large and complex corporate and public-sector clients.
• Verifiable expertise in risk placement involving reinsurance, self-insurance, and other complex risk financing structures.
• A valid RE5 certification is mandatory.

Highly Advantageous:

• A valid RE1 certification.
• A relevant university degree or advanced insurance diploma 

Logistics: This role is based at our Johannesburg head office but will require national travel to meet with clients and insurers.