Head of Reserving

Head of Reserving

Department: Performance Management, MI & Data Analytics

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: UK - London

Description

As a key member of the Performance Management team, you will lead CFC's Reserving function, providing deep portfolio performance analysis and actionable commercial insight across all lines of business. Through robust reserving expertise and data-driven decision making, you will play a critical role in supporting the continued growth, profitability, and long-term success of the business.

You will be accountable for the development, implementation, and ongoing enhancement of CFC's reserving framework, ensuring the delivery of timely, accurate, and insightful reserve analyses to senior stakeholders across the organisation. As the lead actuarial representative externally, you will build and maintain strong relationships with key partners, articulating and presenting CFC's underwriting performance and reserving position with confidence and credibility.

Working as part of the broader Performance Management function, you will collaborate closely with colleagues across Underwriting, Claims, Finance, and Data & AI to strengthen portfolio oversight, enhance data quality and governance, and embed robust management information and analytics to support informed business decision-making and performance optimisation.

Key Responsibilities

Reserving leadership & delivery

• Lead quarterly reserve reviews, ensuring timely and accurate delivery of reserving results.
• Ensure reserving results are well documented and communicated for quarterly reporting.
• Input to CFC MGA’s accrual of Profit Commission in the Profit Commission Forum.

Stakeholder management

• Explain reserving results, claims trends and uncertainty ranges to senior internal stakeholders to support decision-making and performance management.
• Act as the primary actuarial point of contact for carrier and capacity providers’ actuarial teams, delivering transparent analyses to support discussions.
• Engage with the actuarial teams from CFC Syndicate’s external managing agency, SAO actuaries and auditors to provide input into and review their analysis.

Portfolio insight & business partnering

• Work closely with Underwriting to understand CFC’s business and deliver portfolio insights that clearly identify profitable growth opportunities or remediation actions.
• Analyse CFC’s rich data set and work with Underwriting, Claims and Data & AI to identify and source emerging claims indicators that drive underwriting performance.
• Partner with Underwriting and Pricing/Performance teams to link reserve outcomes to pricing adequacy, rate change and portfolio steering.
• Develop and monitor a suite of consistent, accurate KPIs to support identification of strategic opportunities and portfolio optimisation decisions.
• Help set and monitor risk appetites and risk tolerances to ensure delivery against the business plan.

Governance, controls & documentation

• Set reserving policy, control framework and documentation standards.
• Maintain robust model governance and ensure adherence to actuarial standards and internal risk controls.
• Develop and maintain repeatable and granular reserving and performance reporting

People management and culture

• Lead, coach and develop a high-performing reserving team; set clear objectives and ensure effective workload planning.
• Promote a culture of constructive challenge and continuous improvement.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• Deep insurance reserving expertise across specialty lines in the London market, especially in a data rich environment like CFC.
• Strong grasp of reserving methods, diagnostics and uncertainty; ability to communicate technical conclusions in plain language.
• Experience engaging with capacity providers and/or reinsurers.

Qualifications

• Qualified actuary (FIA or equivalent) with 15+ years experience in Lloyd’s/London market, specialty insurance and/or MGA.

Leadership behaviours

• Independent judgement with a pragmatic, commercial mindset.
• Clear, concise communicator with strong written, verbal and presentation skills; able to influence senior stakeholders.
• Structured problem‑solver; strong attention to detail and controls.
• Collaborative partner across Claims, Underwriting and Finance.
• Comfortable with ambiguity; able to prioritise, work under pressure and meet tight deadlines.
• Leadership experience building and developing teams in a fast-growth setting