Senior Manager, Underwriting & Marketing

About Pula Re

Pula Reinsurance Ltd (Pula Re) is the venture by Pula Advisors AG to enter the reinsurance space leveraging on its existing market presence across Africa & Asia. Pula Re is domiciled in Bermuda and will be focussed on emerging economies, targeting high-growth markets across Africa, Asia, and a select exploratory regions such as Latin America, with a strong focus on agriculture, parametric, climate, property cat, speciality and transition risks, along with conventional risks while benefitting and protecting those most vulnerable rural farming communities and in specific women.

Overall Objective

As an early member of the leadership team, you will play a pioneering role in establishing the Property, Casualty & Specialty Lines function from the ground up. This position combines marketing, technical underwriting, claims management, and reinsurance placement, with a strong focus on underwriting discipline, profitable growth, and relationship building.

You will identify new business opportunities and manage or develop relationships with insurers, reinsurance brokers, and other reinsurers to expand Pula RE’s footprint across its target markets. It is a hands-on, market-facing role that will require regular travel across Pula RE’s focus regions. Team expansion will evolve in line with business growth.

Key Responsibilities 

• Develop relationships with insurers, RI Brokers and other reinsurers to maximize opportunities and achieve profitable growth. 
• Initiate market visits and calls to market players to identify sales opportunities and collect intelligence.
• Achieving new business premium, renewal premium retention and monitoring rate, exposure and retention.
• Collaborate with HoDs & senior members of broader Pula Group to develop synergies and local tactics to attract and retain business while executing Pula Re’s underwriting strategies and initiatives.
• Within Pula Re’s guidelines and granted underwriting authority, evaluate new and renewal account information to determine risk acceptability, terms / conditions to be quoted, and pricing.
• Make sound risk and pricing decisions that achieve profitable loss ratios. 
• Maintain underwriting quality as per Pula Re underwriting framework. 
• Document underwriting file to support acceptability and pricing in accordance with Pula Re guidelines. 
• Achieve customer service standards, including established objectives for: 
  • New business quote turnaround. 
  • Renewal quotes 
  • Endorsement, cancellation, audits and other transactions.
  • Policy issuance 
• Provide detailed issuance instructions to ensure policy is delivered consistent with quoted terms and conditions and in accordance with established guidelines relative to policy construction.
• Review mid-term endorsement requests for acceptability and provide instructions for processing.
• Evaluate premium/risk referrals to determine class acceptability and/or appropriateness of current exposure base. Adjust current terms with acceptable changes to ensure the company gets timely payment of adequate premium. 
• Order and review inspections to confirm accounts written are consistent with preliminary underwriting information and act when the inspection reveals unacceptable risk characteristics. 
• Determine if retro-facultative reinsurance is needed and if so, factor retro cost in gross pricing, complete cession procedures; documentation file and follow established workflow procedure to ensure proper reporting / accounting. 
• Managing claims management encompassing recovery from retro partners, payouts cedants and evaluating all claim slips and related documentation.
• Support other team members as assigned when the other underwriter is traveling or out on vacation / sick time. 
• Building underwriting acumen of internal and external stakeholders through training and development opportunities.

Who you are

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree (MBA, Master’s in Business, or degree in Engineering/Technology) preferred.
• Professional insurance certification (e.g., CII, Insurance Institute of Kenya) advantageous but not mandatory.
• Proven success in commercial lines property, casualty, or specialty insurance, ideally within a reinsurer or reinsurance broker of repute.
• Experience in surplus lines underwriting and retrocession treaty design highly preferred.
• Underwriting experience in the parametric insurance sector will be beneficial.
• Strong network and relationships across insurance and reinsurance markets in and beyond Africa.
• Skilled in process mapping, operational efficiency, and cost management.

Skills & Attributes

• Entrepreneurial mindset with a bias for action and ownership.
• Strong commercial judgment and decision-making ability.
• High integrity, resilience, and reliability in delivering results.
• Adaptive and unafraid of ambiguity or high-pressure environments.
• Change champion; open to unlearning convention and embracing innovation.
• Gravitas and presence to engage senior stakeholders and external partners.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and relationship-building skills.
• Growth-oriented leader passionate about learning and developing others.
• Fluent in English; knowledge of other international languages is an asset.