Guidwire Technical Lead, PolicyCenter

Role Overview:

As the Technical Leader and Domain Architect for the Operations and Policy Servicing value stream of our Specialty Commercial Lines Insurance Company, you will play a crucial role in driving innovation, efficiency, and technical excellence within the division. You will be responsible for overseeing the technical aspects of customer services and policy administration processes, ensuring alignment with business objectives, and leveraging technology to optimize operations and enhance decision-making capabilities

Role Summary:

The customer and policy services value stream encompasses a series of interconnected processes and activities aimed at delivering value to the customer through efficient policy management, from initial policy booking to policy renewal or cancellation. This value stream focuses on maximizing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency, adapting to the needs of a diverse global clientele. Key components of this value stream include:

• Policy Issuance, : Once the customer accepts a quote and the underwriting is complete, the policy is officially issued. This involves creating the policy document, outlining the terms and conditions, coverage details, premiums, and any exclusions or limitations.
• Billing: This step involves setting up the payment schedule for premiums and processing payments. For a global insurance company, this may include accommodating various currencies and payment methods, as well as ensuring compliance with international financial regulations.
• Policy Administration and Maintenance: Throughout the life of the policy, customers may need to update their information, adjust coverage, or inquire about policy details. Efficient systems for handling these requests are crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction and ensuring policies remain up-to-date.
• Claims Integration: When a customer files a claim, the company must efficiently assess the claim, validate it, and process payment or denial based on the policy terms and the specifics of the claim. This is a critical touchpoint that significantly influences customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Renewal and Retention: As policies approach expiration, the company should proactively engage customers to discuss renewal options. This involves reviewing the customer’s current needs, adjusting coverage if necessary, and providing incentives or discounts for loyalty where appropriate.

Key Responsibilities:

Provide strategic direction and technical leadership to the operations division, guiding the implementation of innovative solutions to improve efficiency and effectiveness to enable growth.

• Define and maintain the technical architecture roadmap for policy administration and operational workflow systems and processes, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security. Collaborate with enterprise architecture and cross-functional teams to define technology roadmaps aligned with business goals and objectives.
• Identify opportunities to streamline operations workflows through automation, digitization, and integration of data and analytics.
• Collaborate with risk management teams to ensure operations and policy administration processes comply with regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
• Lead the design, development, and implementation of technical solutions to support operations workflows, including AI, workflow, task management, policy administration and document management, data analytics platforms, and decision support systems.
• Lead and inspire a team of developers and technical professionals, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence.
• Stay up to date on emerging technologies, industry trends and competitor activity, providing thought leadership, insight into a vision of the possible, recommending and driving adoption of relevant advancements.
• Develop and maintain a deep understanding of the insurance domain, including industry trends, regulations, and business challenges
• Design and architect scalable, secure, and robust systems that meet the unique requirements of specialty insurance policy lifecycle processes.
• Develop and maintain a comprehensive understanding of the existing technology landscape, identifying opportunities for improvement and optimization.
• Foster strong relationships with internal and external partners, ensuring alignment between technology and business strategies.
• Manage and enhance software/data architecture best practices, standards, patterns, and reference architectures as part of the wider architecture team.
• Supervise and assist with the design and development of domain-level roadmaps.
• Collaborate with business, operations, and technology stakeholders to ensure the efficient and effective utilization of technology.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives and innovation to enhance customer and policy servicing processes, optimize efficiency and improve decision quality.
• Engage with 3rd party suppliers including software vendors, ensuring that changes delivered are in line with standards
• Collaborate with the IT infrastructure team to ensure a robust and secure IT infrastructure that supports underwriting processing activities.
• Work with Enterprise Architecture team to adopt governance frameworks, polices and procedures related to underwriting systems, ensuring underwriting outcomes are catered for.
• Ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of policy data and systems through the implementation of robust security measures and compliance with relevant regulations (e.g., data protection, security standards and privacy laws).
• Serve as a subject matter expert on operations technology and architecture, representing the division in cross-functional initiatives and industry forums.

Personal Specification:

The successful candidate will be a natural relationship builder and team player, with high energy and a personal drive and passion that shines through. You will have the ability to influence, inform, and successfully manage senior stakeholders, and possess excellent written and verbal communication skills. You will be able to distil complex information into simple and understandable language and contribute to creating product/program/project vision, roadmap, and content presentations.

Skills and Abilities

• Ability to find competitive advantage through the innovative use of new technologies to resolve business challenges, improve operational efficiency and enable business strategy
• Ability to work at pace and meet challenging timelines
• Ability to think systemically and to connect strategically complex pieces of work both current and into the future
• Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams, articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders, and influence stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to analyze complex data sets, identify patterns, and make data-driven decisions.
• Ability to stay up-to-date with industry trends and developments, and incorporate new technologies and approaches as appropriate.
• Ability to lead and manage an outsourced development team, fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation.
• Analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate business requirements into effective technology solutions.

Knowledge and Experience

• Technology background, ideally with experience in technical development and configuration roles and/or relevant technical qualifications e.g. a degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related technical development or systems configuration field. Minimum of 8 years of experience in technology development and delivery, with at least 5 years focused on policy administration and related systems.
• Proven experience with Guidewire Policy Centre implementations, including new implementations, upgrades, customizations, and integrations. Cloud implementations a distinct advantage.
• Proven experience in designing and implementing complex technical solutions within the insurance or financial services industry, with a strong understanding of underwriting and policy management processes and systems.
• Demonstrated expertise in defining and maintaining enterprise-level technical architectures, including experience with cloud computing, microservices, and API integration.
• In-depth knowledge of specialty insurance operations processes and technologies.
• Expertise in system architecture, design patterns, and software development methodologies.
• Leadership and management skills, with the ability to guide and mentor a team of internal and partner technology professionals
• A deep understanding of the insurance process and related systems, in particular AI Automation systems in submission, APIs and integration, policy administration, workflow automation, document management, low-code (e.g. Appian), Lloyds integrations (e.g. PPL, Blueprint II, Delegated), Billing and Payments
• Knowledge of insurance policy life cycle, processing systems, methodologies, and best practices.
• Thorough knowledge of regulatory requirements and compliance standards relevant to the insurance industry, with experience implementing controls and processes to ensure compliance.
• Understanding of data security, privacy, and compliance requirements.
• Awareness and experience with various methodologies and frameworks (e.g. Aglie@Scale, DSDM, SDLC).
• Experience managing 3rd party supplier and vendor contracts to measurable outcomes.

Education:

• Ideally holds Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field.
• Industry experience and qualifications on systems and development languages
• Relevant industry certifications (e.g., TOGAF, CISSP, PMP) preferred.