Lead Construction Underwriter

Are you a seasoned construction underwriter looking to make a strategic impact? Our commercial team in Manchester is seeking a dynamic Lead Construction Underwriter to join their team. In this pivotal role, you’ll drive profitable growth within the construction segment, focusing on Mid-Market and corporate clients. Your expertise will help underwrite risks within agreed authority levels to maximise income, while fostering strong relationships with a panel of brokers in line with our company objectives. If you’re passionate about shaping underwriting strategies and delivering exceptional results, we want to hear from you.

**What you’ll be doing**:
As a Lead Construction Underwriter, you’ll help drive and transform how we partner our broker portfolios, through proactive, flexible and collaborative relationships. With a strong balance of technical and trading capability, you’ll be empowered to make decisions, supported by data, insight, and decision support tools on mobile technology to succeed, underwrite new and existing business profitably, accurately, consistently and in line with established underwriting practices, using the full range of appetite and tools available.
- Proactively lead the development of strong trading relationships with a panel of brokers, taking full ownership for the generation of profitable business from nominated panel.
- Proactively develop a robust pipeline of appropriate new business opportunities and ensure that long-term pipeline is realised by ensuring broker / client engagement.
- Lead meetings, presentations and tender responses with brokers / end customers to portray AXA capabilities and secure new business opportunities.
- Coach, train and develop underwriters to continually improve their technical and trading capability from a new and existing business perspective.
- Act as the referral point for Underwriters within our teams, providing technical and trading input to improve the quality of decisions within their empowerment.
- Effectively promote and deploy AXA’s strategy, product range, propositions and key differentiators to leverage commercial opportunities.

**What’s in it for you**:

- ** We’ll equip you with the technical skills for tomorrow**: It’s our job to support you in becoming an expert who has ownership over their work. We want you to be confident that you can make an impact by helping our customers. We ask ourselves what we can do today that will help us in the future. That’s why we offer continuous development to help our colleagues become experts in tomorrow.
- ** Build a career that’s as dynamic as the market you work in**: We’re on a journey of transformation, so we’re investing in new technology that enables us to help our people and businesses thrive.
- ** Shape your career one decision at a time**: We’ll support you to progress through the business and are committed to developing talent. We do this with training and tailored development plans.

At AXA we work smart, empowering our people to balance their time between home and the office in a way that works best for them, their team and our customers. You'll work at least 60% of your week away from home, either at our office location in Manchester, visiting clients or attending industry events.

**What you'll bring**:

- Experience working as a Construction Underwriter dealing with mid-market construction business, including both contractors and liability risks.
- Experience of growing construction books, with a new business target exceeding £1.5m.
- Ability to underwrite in line with underwriting licence and empowerment guidelines.
- Strong accountability for targeting business development and nurturing relationships with panel brokers.
- Familiarity with FCA responsibilities and compliance requirements.
- Excellent trading capability with a good commercial awareness, negotiation skills and the ability to build strong broker relationships.
- Demonstrable technical underwriting expertise in a composite insurance environment.
- Sound knowledge of legislative and regulatory requirements for insurance.
- Cert CII qualification with DIP CII desirable.

As a precondition of employment for this role, you must be eligible and authorised to work in the United Kingdom.

**What we offer**:
At AXA UK, we’re appreciative of the people who work for us and our rewards package is reviewed regularly to reflect that. You can expect to receive:

- Competitive annual salary of up to £90,000 dependent on experience
- Annual company & performance-based bonus
- Contributory pension scheme (up to 12% employer contributions)
- Life Assurance (up to 10 x annual salary)
- 28 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays
- Opportunity to buy up to 5 extra days leave or sell up to 5 days leave
- Up to 21 hours volunteering leave per year
- Private health cover
- Wellbeing services & resources
- AXA employee discounts

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**Who are we**:
AXA Commercial protects businesses, from multinationals to micro start-ups, giving them the c