Homeprotect Home Insurance
R&D Manager - Risk Pricing
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About Homeprotect
Cover for Almost Every Home
We founded Homeprotect on a simple principle — to provide protection to people underserved by the home insurance industry. Since 2002, we’ve been combining smart technology with real human expertise to protect hundreds of thousands of unique homes across the UK, and we're just getting started.
If you're someone who loves solving interesting problems, taking ownership and working with a team that aims high, speaks up and lifts each other, Homeprotect is a place where you can do meaningful work, grow your career and make a real difference for our customers.
What It’s Like To Work Here
Our customers come from all walks of life and so do our people. We're a small but perfectly formed team of insurance specialists, technologists, data scientists, and customer champions — all bringing individual expertise, an appetite for innovation and a shared ambition to protect the homes and things people love.
We work at pace, but we trust our people to work in a way that brings out their best. You’ll collaborate closely across teams, have real ownership from day one and see the impact you have first-hand with flexible working to help you balance the needs of your role with the rhythm of your life.
We’ve been recognised as a Great Place to Work UK for seven consecutive years — most recently ranked 29th nationally, jumping 71 places in a single year.
Role Purpose
As our R&D Manager – Risk Pricing, you’ll be at the heart of turning geospatial and peril science into deployable pricing features that sharpen our differentiation on low-frequency, high-severity household risks. By harnessing address-level and third-party data, you’ll improve price adequacy, stability and customer outcomes while meeting FCA Consumer Duty and model governance standards.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the discovery, design and deployment of new risk features for household pricing, with a focus on geospatial/perils variables that improve differentiation for flood, storm/wind, ground movement/subsidence, and large fire.
- Build and execute a third-party data strategy (identify, assess, and integrate external datasets) to enhance predictive power and pricing adequacy, while meeting FCA Consumer Duty, data protection, and model governance standards.
- Convert research concepts into deployable rating variables and models, delivering measurable improvement in predictive performance and customer outcomes.
- Identify, engineer and validate new risk features across frequency and severity, prioritising low-frequency/high-severity exposures.
- Develop and test peril-specific variables, such as:
- Flood: depth/velocity/defences
- Wind exposure/topography
- Soil shrink–swell indices
- Tree proximity/species
- Roof/material types
- Building separation
- Build and benchmark models (GLMs/GAMs/GBMs; severity curves; large-loss propensity; accumulation-aware adjustments), ensuring interpretability and business usability.
- Scan the market for data sources; run POCs (proofs of concept); quantify predictive lift, coverage, cost/benefit, and operational fit.
- Own data contracts, SLAs (Service Level Agreements), and refresh cycles; ensure metadata, data dictionaries, and usage constraints are maintained.
- Integrate and calibrate hazard layers and vulnerability features for UK household risk: river/coastal/pluvial flood, windstorm, subsidence/ground movement, and large fire.
- Combine hazard, exposure, and vulnerability to derive rating signals; align with accumulation/cat views and climate change considerations (e.g., trend stress tests).
- Translate R&D outputs into production-ready rating variables for the pricing engine, including clear documentation and monitoring plans.
- Adhere to pricing governance, Model Risk Management, and FCA rules, including explainability, fairness testing, and avoiding the use of protected characteristics or close proxies.
- Manage and develop a small team of data scientists/analysts, setting priorities, coaching on best practices, and building reusable tools/templates.
- Communicate complex analysis and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders; secure sign-off via Pricing Committee.
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Knowledge, Skills & Experience
Essential:
- 7+ years in personal lines pricing/R&D/data science, with strong household or property peril exposure.
- Proven track record delivering new pricing variables/models into production, with measurable impact on metrics like LR (Loss Ratio), Gini, IBNR (Incurred But Not Reported), or margin.
- Hands-on experience in geospatial analytics and third-party data integration at the address level in the UK market.
- Proficiency in:
- Geospatial tools: QGIS, ArcGIS, Python/R, SQL, spatial joins, tiling, and address matching (UPRN).
- PostGIS, GeoPandas.
- Model governance: documentation, reproducibility, explainability, bias/fairness assessment, stability monitoring.
- Knowledge of UK datasets and vendors, such as:
- Flood: JBA, Fathom, Ambiental; EA/SEPA flood maps; DEFRA/NRW; Flood Re eligibility.
- Subsidence: BGS shrink-swell/clay, soil moisture deficit (UKCEH/Met Office), tree datasets.
- Windstorm: Met Office wind/return-period gusts, topography/exposure.
- Fire: roof/wall materials (EPC/VOA/property datasets), thatch/listed status, building separation, and fire station response times.
- Base mapping/attributes: Ordnance Survey (AddressBase/OSMM), Land Registry, elevation/DTM (Digital Terrain Model)/DSM (Digital Surface Model), coastal erosion risk, property footprint/age/usage.
- Collaborative problem-solving ability; effective partnerships with Retail Pricing, Data Science, Claims, and Customer teams to deliver shared outcomes.
- Clear, influential communication skills, simplifying complex modelling for senior leaders, tech partners, and non-technical colleagues.
- Accountable people leadership; sets high standards, coaches teams, drives change in a lean, fast-moving environment.
- Deep understanding of the home insurance market, products, emerging risks, and opportunities; ambition to progress to senior underwriting leadership.
Bonus Points:
- Experience in underwriting team leadership.
- Familiarity with big data stack, cloud computing, and high-volume, distributed computing frameworks.
Benefits
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We want you to feel rewarded, supported, and set up to thrive throughout your career with us.
Learning and Growth
- Structured learning, mentoring, and on-the-job experience.
- Support for role-relevant professional qualifications.
- Lunch and Learn sessions to stay connected across the business.
Health and Wellbeing
- Private healthcare through BUPA.
- Employee Assistance Programme offering legal, financial, and counselling support.
- Wellbeing Centre, access to online tools and resources, and regular wellbeing seminars/workshops.
- Annual flu jabs and an eye care voucher.
Financial Security and Reward
- Annual discretionary bonus scheme (up to 30% of base pay).
- Life insurance at four times your salary.
- Pension with Aegon.
- Employee discounts on Homeprotect home insurance, including a friends and family discount + staff referral bonus when someone you recommend joins.
Time Off
- 25 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays, plus the option to buy or sell up to 5 additional days yearly.
Genuine Flexible Working
We trust our people to work in a way that best suits them — with flexible working to balance the needs of your role with the rhythm of your life. Everyone is expected to be in the office at least once a week, as in-person collaboration is critical for culture and teamwork.
- Homeworking starter kit from day one.
- Claim reimbursement towards additional home office equipment within your first six months.
Purpose and Community
- Charity partnership with Refuge, the UK's largest specialist domestic abuse charity.
- Regular social, wellbeing, and charitable events throughout the year.
Unique as Standard
We're proud to be an equal opportunity employer and actively encourage applications from all backgrounds. We believe in celebrating difference — everything that makes both our customers and our people unique. We consider visa sponsorship on a case-by-case basis, so please don’t let that stop you from applying.
We encourage you to let us know if you need any extra help with your application or have any requirements during the recruitment journey — we want the process to work for you.
Regulatory Responsibilities
As an FCA-regulated insurer, doing the right thing isn’t just a compliance requirement — it’s how we operate. All colleagues are expected to uphold FCA Individual Conduct Rules (1-6) and act with integrity, due skill and care, openness with regulators, and a genuine commitment to delivering good outcomes for our customers.
Key Responsibilities Include
- Work within approved processes and authority limits.
- Keep accurate and auditable records.
- Protect data under UK GDPR and information security policies.
- Escalate risks and exceptions promptly.
- Report incidents, breaches, financial crime, and sanctions concerns (including whistleblowing).
- Support vulnerable customers through reasonable adjustments.
- Complete mandatory training to maintain competence.
If the role falls within SM&CR (Senior Managers and Certification Regime), a supplementary document defining key regulatory responsibilities will be provided.
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