R&D Manager - Risk Pricing

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 (e.g., flood depth/velocity/defences, wind exposure/topography, soil shrink–swell indices, tree proximity/species, roof/material, building separation) and large-loss propensity/segmentation.

•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; quantify predictive lift, coverage, cost/benefit and operational fit.

•Own data contracts, SLAs 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 in the pricing engine with clear documentation and monitoring plans.

•Adhere to pricing governance, Model Risk Management and FCA rules (Consumer Duty, GI Pricing Practices), including explainability, fairness testing, and non use of protected characteristics or close proxies.

•Manage and develop a small team of data scientists/analysts; set priorities, coach on best practice, and build reusable tools/templates.

•Communicate complex analysis and recommendations to technical and non technical stakeholders; secure sign off via Pricing Committee.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

•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 LR/Gini/IBNR or margin impact.

•Hands-on geospatial analytics and third party data integration at address-level in the UK market.

•Geospatial: GIS 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.

•UK datasets and vendors, e.g.: 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. Storm/wind: Met Office wind/return-period gusts; topography/exposure. Fire: roof/wall materials (EPC/VOA/property datasets), thatch/listed status, building separation, proximity to fire stations/response times; hydrant density proxies. Base mapping and attributes: Ordnance Survey (AddressBase/OSMM), Land Registry, elevation/DTM/DSM, coastal erosion risk, property footprint/age/usage.

•Collaborative operator; partners effectively with Retail Pricing, Data Science, Claims and Customer teams to deliver shared outcomes.

•Clear, influential communicator who simplifies complex modelling for senior leaders, capacity partners and non technical colleagues.

•Accountable people leader who sets high standards, coaches teams and drives change in a lean, fast moving environment.

•Deep understanding of the home insurance market, products and emerging risks/opportunities; ambition to progress to senior underwriting leadership.

BENEFITS

We want you to feel rewarded, supported and set up to thrive throughout your career with us.

Learning and Growth: We invest in your development through structured learning, mentoring, buddying, on-the-job experience and cross-functional projects. We support role-relevant professional qualifications where they'll make the biggest difference, and our Lunch and Learn sessions to help you stay connected to what’s going on right across the business.

Health and Wellbeing: Your wellbeing matters here. We offer private healthcare through BUPA, an Employee Assistance Programme covering legal, financial and counselling support for you, a Wellbeing Centre with online tools and resources, regular wellbeing seminars and workshops, annual flu jabs and an annual eye care voucher.

Financial Security and Reward: We offer an annual discretionary bonus scheme upto 30% of your base pay, life insurance at four times your salary, and a pension with Aegon. You'll also receive a significant discount on Homeprotect home insurance - with a friends and family discount too, and a staff referral bonus when someone you recommend joins the team.

Time Off: 25 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, with the option to buy or sell up to five additional days each year.

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. We ask that everyone comes into the office at least once a week, as we believe in-person connection is important for collaboration, culture and building great relationships. You'll receive a homeworking starter kit from day one and can claim towards additional home office equipment within your first six months.

Purpose and Community: We care about more than just the work. Through our charity partnership with Refuge, the UK's largest specialist domestic abuse charity and regular social, wellbeing and charitable events throughout the year, there are plenty of ways to connect, give back and feel part of something bigger.

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 for the right candidate, 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 at any stage of the recruitment journey, we want the process to work for you.

Your data will be maintained in line with our recruitment data privacy policy.

Regulatory Responsibilities

As an FCA regulated insurer, doing the right thing isn't a compliance requirement - it's simply how we work. All colleagues are expected to uphold the 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.

You'll work within approved processes and authority limits, keep accurate and auditable records, protect data under UK GDPR and our information security policies, escalate risks and exceptions promptly, report incidents, breaches and any financial crime or sanctions concerns (including via whistleblowing), support vulnerable customers with reasonable adjustments, and complete all mandatory training to maintain competence.

If the role falls within SM&CR, a supplementary document outlining the key regulatory responsibilities will be provided.