Associate Manager, Insurance Operations
Pula Advisors
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 19 million smallholder farmers, 41% of which were women across 13 markets in Africa and Asia who pay an average of $6.8 per season to insure their crops. So far we've unlocked over $2.5 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.
About the Role
You will be working with a team of actuaries 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. You will be expected to manage, design and price products, improve and analyse 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.
What you will be doing
- 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 and engage in negotiations for risk placement.
- 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.
Who you are
- Bachelor’s degree in Actuarial Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field. (First Class preferred)
- At least 3 years experience in an actuarial role
- Preferably 5 or more Professional Actuarial Exams completed (e.g. IFOA/SOA)
- In-depth knowledge of insurance products, underwriting, and actuarial principles.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to simplify complex technical information.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.
- Proficiency in programming tools and software.
What Pula will bring to the table
- Growth potential: 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 19 countries across Africa and Asia, and by 2023, have facilitated crop insurance cover to over 5 million farmers, 40% of which are women. We are a for profit, and have raised over $25 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.
- 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 an oversubscribed $20m series B funding despite the economic downturn.
- 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.
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.
