Product Manager – Underwriting

About Hiscox UK  

Hiscox UK is a leading brand in the insurance market, recognised as setting the standards others try to emulate. We consistently deliver strong growth and exceptional returns, recruiting only the very best and empowering them to deliver. We are known for insuring the homes of the rich and famous through to the most innovative technology companies. Our customers are diverse and unique and are only united by our ability to provide specialist insurance tailored to their needs. 

Business Context  

• Hiscox UK is embarking on a major transformation to drive growth and improve efficiency, ensuring we remain competitive in an increasingly complex market. 

• This transformation focuses on four key business areas: Direct, Broker, Operations and Underwriting, with a strong emphasis on building a sustainable, long-term transformation capability. 

• A number of initiatives are already underway across these areas, requiring clear ownership, prioritisation and delivery to realise business value. 

• Product Managers will play a critical role as transformation partners to the business, shaping vision, defining roadmaps and driving delivery of change. 

• This is a senior role requiring strong stakeholder management and the ability to build trusted relationships at UKLT level. 

The Role - Underwriting  

This role will specifically partner with the Underwriting business area, with responsibility for shaping, prioritising and executing the roadmap to support underwriting decision-making and risk selection. 

This includes driving the transformation of underwriting platforms, tools and supporting capabilities, ensuring the proposition evolves to support efficient, effective and data-driven underwriting in line with business strategy. 

Purpose 

• Collaborate with Senior Leadership to define, own and continuously evolve the multi-year roadmap for the business area, with end-to-end accountability for the strategic outcomes, investment decisions, benefits realisation across a multi-product portfolio  

• Be accountable for articulating, evolving and landing the outcomes inherent within the roadmap for the business vertical they are supporting 

• Broker against competing demands to ensure the right trade-offs are made to secure the benefits realisation plan 

• Own Discovery & Experience Design. Lead problem framing, hypothesis-driven discovery, facilitate journey mapping and UX/CX collaboration 

• Ensure business outcomes are translated into clearly defined, outcome-based product intent, with requirements elaborated at the appropriate level by the wider delivery team.Being the ambassador and voice of their journey area within the Transformation function, ensuring there is a clear articulation of the case for change and the capability needed to deliver that 

• Agree solutions and compromises to ensure the right decisions are made for our customer groups 

• Identifying issues across the complex delivery landscape and highlighting where business outcomes are under threat to ensure corrective action is taken  

• Create and foster strong relationships with all stakeholder groups across the business and transformation areas  

Key Responsibilities 

• Front door to Transformation - Acting as the UKLT’s front door to transformation, reporting to the relevant UKLT member as a dotted line. 

• Define, Own and Iterate the Product Vision & Strategy for each business area using both external and internal data to drive strategic decisions.  

• Backlog Ownership: Define outcomes, prioritise epics/features using a transparent framework tied to measurable value 

• Be embedded within the business area working with the senior team to co-create and evolve the strategy and then translate this into capability needed. 

• Roadmap development & management - Overall accountability for creating and evolving business area roadmap, ensuring there is a clear read across to the business strategy 

• Trade Off Management - make and defend complex prioritisation and investment trade-offs across competing strategic objectives. and act as a ‘strong voice of the business’ in transformation governance 

• Accountable for the delivery and optimisation of material business benefits, including commercial growth, efficiency, and customer outcomes, and for corrective action where value is at risk, tracking performance and identifying challenges and opportunities 

• Drive out opportunities to enable business owned change and increasing flexibility and agility in delivery 

• Measurement: Define success metrics (OKRs/KPIs), monitor performance, and iterate 

Candidate Profile  

Skills and Experience 

• Strong experience in the insurance sector, operating as a Product Manager / Senior Product Manager in underwriting or underwriting platform environments, with a clear understanding of underwriting processes and risk decision-making 

• Proven experience partnering with senior stakeholders, including Executive/ExCo-level leaders, to shape strategy, define roadmaps and influence investment decisions 

• Track record of leading and delivering large-scale product or transformation initiatives across complex business domains 

• Strong strategic and commercial mindset, with the ability to balance growth, efficiency and customer outcomes 

• Experience owning and evolving product roadmaps, including prioritisation, trade-off decisions and benefits realisation 

• Strong capability in discovery and problem framing, working closely with design, technology and business teams to shape solutions 

• Experience embedding customer insight into product and roadmap decisions, particularly within digital or customer-facing environments 

• Comfortable operating in matrixed, cross-functional environments, with strong stakeholder management and influencing capability 

• Strong communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate the case for change 

• Experience working in Agile product environments, including backlog ownership and delivery oversight 

• Data-driven mindset, with experience tracking performance and delivering measurable outcomes 

• Collaborative leadership style, with the ability to bring others along the transformation journey 

Ways of Working  

• Collaborative and inclusive, working across teams to shape priorities and deliver outcomes 

• Growth mindset, focused on continuous improvement and unlocking potential 

• Strong team player, able to bring others along the transformation journey 

Diversity and flexible working at Hiscox  

At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the job and we’re committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success. We also know that working life doesn’t always have to in the office, and as long as it’s safe to do so, we will be operating a hybrid way of working to encourage a healthy work life balance, with 2 to 3 days in the office per week.