Senior Product Manager

About the Role

We are looking to recruit a highly motivated, entrepreneurial-minded and tenacious person with ideally at least 8 years' relevant professional underwriting and risk assessment experience in the field of natural catastrophes and climate risk assessment.

As a member of the global Product Management team, the successful candidate will work very closely with the regional Public Sector Solutions (PSS) client management team and with various underwriting and structuring teams across Swiss Re business units. The candidate is expected to represent PSS' business solution capabilities in the respective region, allowing us to offer client ready, value adding products in meeting client needs. He/she utilizes own expertise and leverages the Group's overall technical know-how, not the least by means of effectively collaborating with cross functional teams.

While technical abilities, structuring and underwriting expertise and project management skill will be core criteria for the successful candidate, ability to effectively present complex technical aspects in an easy to grasp way, in writing as well as orally, are of equal importance. The position holder will engage frequently with public sector clients, brokers, modelling firms and data providers on all levels of seniority

Key accountabilities include:

• Assessing and modelling natural catastrophe and climate risks with focus on the Asia region using existing tools but also designing robust novel solutions.
• Representing and leveraging the full spectrum of Swiss Re products and solutions across multiple lines of business (bringing the Groups capabilities to bear, acting as a "solutions broker").
• Effectively and responsibly lead lager scale transactions for PSS or development projects covering traditional structuring and underwriting as well as product/solution development.
• Close collaboration with the product experts and local client facing teams, also in front of clients, for the best possible and most effective delivery of sales efforts, representing the team's technical expertise regionally.
• Contribute to sales effectiveness with the preparation of technical documentation.
• Be a "translator" between the client need and what SR can offer or develop.  This by using language and illustrations that makes such material appreciated by the non-expert.
• Driving effectiveness and ensuring replication of successful transactions to improve efficiency and overall economics of PSS’ transaction management

About the Team

Governments and other public sector entities are increasingly aware of the various risks they absorb as explicit or implicit risk takers. Over the last ten years, Swiss Re has invested in educating public sector partners about this changing paradigm and in identifying ways that risk transfer can help governments handle these new fiscal challenges.

The success of Public Sector Solutions presents Swiss Re with a significant opportunity for expansion and business development and solidifies the public sector as a meaningful element of Swiss Re's growth strategy across its (re)insurance and capital markets related businesses. In helping our clients, we can accelerate economic development, improve risk awareness and deepen social resilience.

We aim to develop business opportunities with the public sector by systematically approaching national and municipal governments, NGOs and development banks in a coordinated way across the Group. We provide risk transfer solutions to reduce the contingent liabilities of governments. These solutions range from non-traditional risk transfer products such as cat bonds for pandemics to reinsurance coverages for SMEs for a changing climate.

While the team increasingly reaches out into other lines of business, large natural catastrophes as well as large-scale climate-related risks remain at the very core of our business success.  

To reach our ambitious business targets, we are looking for a Product Manager with a core focus on Asia (including ANZ) who is ready for such a challenge and keen to support Public Sector Solutions in a technical function and close to the client.

About You

To be successful the following key capabilities are critical:

• Ideally minimum 8 of professional experience, ideally in field of underwriting, risk assessment, risk modelling or applied sciences (e.g. EQ, TC, Flood, Climate). Experience with index-based risk transfer solutions (parametric), is of advantage
• Experience in the insurance industry or closely related fields.  Familiarity with index-based, parametric risk transfer products will be a plus.
• Strong background in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) related disciplines (master's degree or higher), familiarity with quantitative settings.
• Superior command of analytics software including but not limited to Excel, VBA, Python or "R". Experience in geographical information systems (GIS) is a strong plus
• Strong interest to translate complex subjects into easy-to-understand material to be used in front of clients
• Outspoken, self-propelled individual who enjoys working in a global environment and oftentimes in virtual team settings across various time zones. Skilled communicator.
• Excellent team player, willing to take different roles in a fast-changing and agile environment. Willingness to work with and connect to a truly globally domiciled and operating team.
• Perseverance, ability to see the big picture without compromising attention to detail.
• Drives transaction execution to maximize sustainable profitability and according to internal processes.
• Supports client managers in decision-making process on opportunity triaging and negotiations, willingness to uphold unpopular views at times
• Fluency in English, any other regional language is a plus, especially Chinese/Mandarin.