Africa Climate Careers Network's Climate Job Board

Discover emerging career opportunities in the climate and clean energy sectors

Actuarial Associate

Pula Advisors

Pula Advisors

Data Science
Nairobi, Kenya
Posted on Jul 12, 2024

About Pula

We are an insuretech firm that provides agriculture insurance design and execution services, specialising in index based insurance and are backed by top tier VC investors who have invested more than $25 million in the business. Since 2015 we have provided climate insurance to 15.4 million smallholder farmers, 41% of which were women across 19 markets in Africa and Asia who pay an average of $6.8 per season to insure their crops. So far we've unlocked over $2.22 billion of capital from local and international insurance markets for climate risks since we started in 2015 and paid out $40.8 million to our client farmers.

Pula is a fast-paced space, constantly adapting to new opportunities and challenges and we are made up of a high-performance, multi-cultural team. We expect our team to value performance, results and professionalism.

At Pula, our values are:

  • Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!
  • Connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.
  • Have a Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.
  • We have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better.

According to the UN’s InterGovernmental Panel for Climate Change more than 3.3 billion people globally live in hotspots with high vulnerability to climate change and are now already feeling the impact of climate change through increased temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall.
Insurance is a tool for vulnerable households in these affected regions to adapt to the effects that climate change is already having today on these households. It is a tool that enables for compensation payment for losses and damages that these households had no part in causing. Insurance compensation enables these households to make adjustments to their day to day livelihoods and practices and therefore allows for an equitable and just transition.

At Pula, we are building the systems that enable farmers worldwide to access insurance, using technology to insure this previously uninsured worldwide. We work in over 17 countries across Africa and Asia, and by 2021, have facilitated crop insurance cover to over 6 million farmers, 30% of which are women, across Kenya, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Zambia, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. We are a for profit, and have raised over $10 million from leading venture and institutional investors as well as developed philanthropic relationships with private foundations and bilateral donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and German Insure Resilience Solutions Fund that have accelerated investments in our target markets.

Pula is proudly fast paced, constantly learning from the challenges we face and overcome. We are proudly culturally diverse but united in our ambition of continuous high-performance. By challenging ourselves we believe that we can overcome the hard problems we love solving.

At Pula, our culture is defined by our:


1.Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!

2. Ability to connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.

3. Our Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.

4. Ability to have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better.

As an Acturial Associate:

You will be working with a team of qualified actuaries, CFA’s and data scientists to build, price and assess products that will shape the future of agriculture, climate risks and other insurance product lines across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

What you will be doing:

The Actuary will be expected to manage, design and price products, improve and analyze existing products, manage the risk placement process for insurance contracts, conduct research on projects/opportunities as needed, analyze payouts and any other task as needed from time to time.

The details of the tasks expected to be undertaken under this role are as below:

  • Designing, pricing and implementing bespoke Climate and Agriculture insurance solutions or any other product lines as required from time to time.
  • Conduct, document and implement research on new or existing product opportunities as well as projects undertaken by the business.
  • Collecting, managing and ensuring high quality data is collected across our countries of operations especially for new or modified products.
  • Creative thinking around analysis of customer data and visualizing this data
  • Provide technical and analytical support in engagements with insurers and reinsurers to seek their buy-in into the new or modified products.
  • Understand, analyze, and design solutions based on engagements with potential clients to understand their risk exposure needs.
  • Providing inputs and liaising with automation and innovation teams on automation of insurance operation processes for new and modified products/innovations.
  • Liaising with the commercial function with respect to evaluation, design and launch of new products and opportunities.
  • Developing technical notes, legal wordings, and briefs for insurers and reinsurers across various geographies.
  • Supporting the business in the negotiation of product design and rates between the client, insurers and reinsurers.
  • Payouts: Provide timely payout reports, present the payout reports to internal as well as external stakeholders which include Commercial teams, Clients, Insurers etc.
  • Work closely with reinsurers and insurers to get the payout approvals.
  • Insurance & Reinsurance: Provide technical support to reinsurers and insurers. Organize regular training for the industry at large.
  • Data management: Ensuring data protocol, systems and quality control measures are developed, identifying, and maintaining digital security systems to safeguard sensitive data, initiate data improvement and data automation strategies.
  • Claims experience Analysis: Monitoring claims experience of company’s insurance products to feedback product re-structuring and pricing decisions.
  • Support the overall growth of business of the firm, meeting with external business partners as part of expansion initiatives.

Beyond this, a successful candidate should:

  • Autonomously take full responsibility of analytical projects in some of the following areas: product pricing, payouts, automation, corporate planning, reinsurance, and/or R&D. The Actuary will be accountable to find the proper ways to meet the needs, deadlines and expectations of its stakeholders.
  • Be responsible to find solutions and assist colleagues with their problem-solving of complex situations by sharing understanding of difficult actuarial/statistical concepts and providing training on such.
  • Master the analytics and actuarial work processes to be able to recommend improvements and implement approved modifications, including but not limited to creating new macros working with existing software, etc.
  • Thrive in a fast-paced startup environment, where getting the job done within seasonal deadlines is paramount
  • Occasional work and travel to rural areas in Africa and Asia
  • Flourish in a highly talented, diverse and multicultural team environment

Recommended qualifications:

  1. Bachelor’s degree in actuarial science, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field. (First Class preferred)
  2. 3 years experience in an actuarial role
  3. 6 International Actuarial Exams completed
  4. In-depth knowledge of insurance products, underwriting, and actuarial principles.
  5. Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to simplify complex technical information.
  6. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
  7. Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.
  8. Proficiency in programming tools and software.

What Pula will bring to the table

  • Growth potential: With an untapped market of 1.5 billion smallholders worldwide, on track to doubling the number of farmers insured in 2021 and Pula’s global leadership in Agriculture Insurance, our new staffers have a tremendous upside growth potential.
  • Market Leader: Not only is the opportunity massive, but Pula is by far the market leader in it’s category with 11m farmers insured as of 2023.
  • Solid: Pula has been funded by leading venture capital investors (Omidyar Network, ACCION, MercyCorps) and global philanthropic institutions (MasterCard Foundation, CGAP/World Bank as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Pula closed a $6m series A funding in December 2020 in the right in the middle of the pandemic a clear testimony of the opportunity that Pula is going after.
  • Respected: Winner of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2019, Winner of The InsureTech of the Award, Africa. Featured on TED talks, The New York Times, The Economist.
  • Impact and creation: This is a high-impact role, that offers a unique opportunity to bring the company to the next level, whilst developing new strategies, approaches and ideas.
  • Leadership: The founders & CEO foster a culture of transparency, respect, high performance, pragmatism, execution and personal development.
  • Purpose: It is rare to find a professional opportunity that offers accelerated professional development and a life purpose. Pula is going through a second phase of accelerated growth that will naturally provide professional development, whilst contributing to the financial stability of small farmers in the emerging markets.
  • Remuneration: Competitive base salary accordingly with seniority and experience, commission on closed sales and an employee share option plan that offers an attractive equity upside.

To learn more about Pula you can visit

TED Talk: Crop Insurance, an Idea Worth Seeding
New York Times: He Grew up on a Farm. Now, He Helps Protect Them
The Economist: The Poor, Who Most Need Insurance, Are Least Likely to Have It

How to apply

Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English.

Our process:

Stage 1 The Culture Interview: Your complete applications will be reviewed and those shortlisted will be invited for a culture interview to understand if you have Pula DNA

Stage 2 The Technical Interview: Those that pass the culture interview will be invited to complete an assignment that will give you a good sense of what working at Pula is like. This way you will get to know if you like the job, and we get to know you. Those with completed assignments will be invited for a technical interview with the hiring manager.

Stage 3 The Panel Interview: Those that pass the technical interview will be interviewed by a panel of future colleagues who you will be working with at Pula so you can get to know your new colleagues and they can get to know you.

Stage 4 The Reference Check: as described :-)

Stage 5 Offer: If you have gotten this far, you may pat yourself on the back- as you’ll receive an offer!

Pula’s mission is to provide farmer resilience. To achieve this, we put our small holder farmers that use our services and the employees that provide them at the heart of everything we do. For that purpose, Pula was created to be an equal opportunity employer that celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.