Current Vacancies at PPS

Minimum Requirements    

Education: 

• Financial / Medical aligned degree, e.g. Nursing, BCOM, BSC

Experience:

• 10+ years underwriting experience in long term insurance.
• 10+ years insurance industry experience.
• Proven experience in underwriting or related roles.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Sound medical & life assurance knowledge. Familiarity with industry regulations and compliance standards.
• Good computer knowledge - MS Outlook, Excel and Word are necessary.
• Must have a mature, disciplined and driven personality.
• Ability to work independently as well as being a good team-player with excellent interpersonal skills.
• Deadline/target driven, with ability to work under pressure.
• Have a skill set that includes good levels of communication (both written & verbal up to senior & executive level), negotiation and analytical skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to engage effectively with clients.
• Ability to manage and prioritize multiple tasks efficiently.
• Detail-oriented with a focus on accuracy in documentation and communication.

Competencies:

• Must use underwriting initiative and discretion in decision making.
• Business writing skills. Business Acumen.
• Planning and organizing.
• Client centricity.
• Building and maintaining relationships.
• Resilience.
• Complex problem solving.
• Adapting and responding to change.
• Innovation and Forward Thinking
• Persuading and Influencing 

Duties and Responsibilities    

Process optimization and efficiencies:

• The successful candidate will be responsible for underwriting life, disability, critical illness, sickness and permanent incapacity cover within agreed underwriting authority limits.
• To underwrite cases within the agreed service level agreements.
• Candidate must be willing to work under pressure and within agreed service levels.
• Responsible for achieving and maintaining standards in underwriting. Conduct regular audits on underwriting department and ensure standards are maintained.
• Provide constructive feedback to underwriting manager/underwriter team regarding matters arising. 
• Assess and authorize specific underwriting cases.
• Responsible for financial underwriting to ensure accurate financial underwriting decisions.
• Participation in projects to improve departmental service-owning your role in the project and completing tasks as required by providing input.

Liaison Champion:

• Assist in the creation and presentation of counter-offer letters to clients.
• Collaborate with underwriting team to tailor counter offers that align with client needs and company policies.
• Ensure timely delivery and follow-up on counter-offer responses.
• Professionally handle declines by providing clear and comprehensive explanations to clients.
• Effectively communicate deferrals, managing expectations and offering guidance for future submissions.
• Serve as a bridge between underwriting decisions and client understanding, fostering positive relationships.
• Conduct tele-underwriting interviews with potential clients, showcasing strong interpersonal skills.
• Manage calls efficiently, asking probing questions to gather necessary information.
• Provide accurate and detailed information to clients while adhering to company guidelines and compliance standards.
• Discussing all adverse decisions with Financial Advisors (counter offer letters, Decline and defer.

Risk and Compliance:

• Adhere to internal SLA's to ensure operational efficiency and achievement of agreed customer service standards.
• Proficient in the assessment and management of underwriting decisions.
• Must understand the underwriting environment and general protocols and processes.
• Ensure adherence to regulatory and compliance requirements.
• Contribute and assist to review processes and protocols where required to assist in PPS’ delivery of quality underwriting decisions.

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Minimum Requirements    

Education: 

• Medical qualification compulsory (Nursing, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy or related).

Experience:

• 4 years’ experience in the insurance industry.
• 3 years’ experience in claims assessment including Income protection, Lump Sum Disability and dread disease.
• Proven work experience as Claims Assessor in customer-facing role.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Must have excellent telephone etiquette.
• Good computer knowledge - MS Outlook, Excel and Word are necessary.
• Good report writing and presentation skills.
• Must have a mature, disciplined and driven personality.
• Ability to work independently as well as being a good team-player with excellent interpersonal skills.
• Attention to detail.
• Deadline/target driven, with ability to work under pressure.
• Logical and analytical.
• Effective time management skills.

Competencies:

• Communication skills (written and verbal).
• Business writing skills.
• Planning and organizing.
• Attention to detail.
• Client centricity.
• Building and maintaining relationships.
• Resilience.

Duties and Responsibilities    

• Process optimization and efficiencies:
• Assessment and management of short-term sickness, critical illness and hospital claims.
• Check the technical aspects of the claim – Inclusive of potential non-disclosure, and exclusions.
• Review all medical information on file, analyze and synopsize information at hand.
• Determine and record additional required information.
• Decide on referral to an independent specialist.
• Receive Independent Specialist reports and analyze and synopsize the report in context of the claim and PPS Provider Policy.
• Correspondence to clients with respect to claims outcomes and requirements for future claims in order to manage claims.
• Keeping accurate records of all claims assessed in accordance with departmental procedures.
• Deal with first line queries by members and brokers telephonically and via e-mail.
• Deal with Arbitration and Ombudsman cases and collaborate with other stakeholder during the Complaints process.
• Participation in projects to improve departmental service-owning your role in the project and completing tasks as required by providing input.

Risk and Compliance:

• Adhere to internal SLA's to ensure operational efficiency and achievement of agreed customer service standards.
• Proficient in the assessment of claims.
• Must understand claims environment and general claims protocols and processes.
• Ensure adherence to audit requirements.
• Ensure adherence to regulatory and compliance requirements.

People and Culture:

• Checking and Authorization of claims in terms of published delegation of authority.
• Collaboration with relevant stakeholders: Research & Development, Legal, Operational Accounts, Non-disclosure and Internal Control.
• Contribute and assist to review processes and protocols where required to assist in PPS’ delivery of quality claims decisions.
• Forge strong working relationships with stakeholders.

Knowledge Champion:

• Ensure that own knowledge is kept abreast with industry & regulatory information and changes through various internal and external information sources.
• Provide technical information and support.
   

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Minimum Requirements    

Qualifications:

• An appropriate qualification (BSc – IT / Data Engineering or similar). 

Experience:

• Three years experience in a Data Engineering role building and optimizing data pipelines. Developing data acquisition, warehousing and reporting solutions.
• Advanced working SQL knowledge and experience working with relational databases, query authoring (SQL) as well as working familiarity with a variety of databases, technologies, languages and visualisation engines (Power BI, Tableau).
• Experience building analytics tools that utilize the data pipeline to provide actionable insights into customer management, operational efficiency and other key business performance metrics

Knowledge:

• Knowledge and understanding of the best practices of the financial services / graduate professional client market.
• Knowledge of information management practices including information lifecycle management, data modelling, master data management and carrying out business audits and requirements gathering.
• Knowledge and understanding of relevant database and query solutions, applications and tools.
• Knowledge and appreciation of the need for consistency in data management and governance.

Duties and Responsibilities    

• Implementing data strategies and systems, to build and maintain the data architecture that will drive various initiatives across the organisation.
• Automate extremely high volumes of data delivery and creatively solve data volume and scaling challenges. Contribute to the design and architecture of innovative solutions to difficult problems.
• Work with team and stakeholders to continually assess and redefine data technology stack to support changing data patterns and business use cases and to bridge the gaps between Data Analytics (Engineering), Business, and Product by raising with the Group Head and Senior Data Engineer.
• Monitor the infrastructure with IT which is required  for optimal extraction, transformation, and loading of data from a wide variety of data sources using SQL and ‘big data’ technologies.
• Work with IT to source and load a wide range of data across our business into the data lake so that it can be used by analysts and developers to develop data solutions for the business.
• Manage the data ingestion framework using specified toolsets and will need to understand and continuously seek techniques to ingest data, as well as ensure a high degree of quality and confidence.
• Assemble large, complex data sets that meet functional / non-functional business requirements.
• Identify, design, and implement internal process improvements: automating manual processes, optimizing data delivery, re-designing infrastructure for greater scalability, etc.
• Create data tools for analytics and data scientist team members that assist them in building and optimizing our product into an innovative industry leader.
• Liaise between technical teams and specialists and business stakeholders, fostering inter-departmental coordination and co-operation.
• Data Governance (Quality, Accessibility, Ownership and Security). Engage with stakeholders to obtain an understanding of their data practices to contract, manage and meet expectations.
• Identifies data quality issues, conducts root cause analysis and provides feedback to the Senior Data Engineer.
• Influence decision making by providing an advisory service, guidance and support on data quality practices.
• Maintaining a thorough understanding of the business and data strategy.Identify opportunities to influence the improvement or enhancement of business processes and methodologies by researching and recommending improvement initiatives and effective ways to operate and add value to PPS.
• Train other employees in the organization on how to access the Data Ecosystem and how to make the best use of its content.

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Minimum Requirements    

Qualifications:

• Matric
• B.Sc Degree or similar.

Experience:

• Minimum 5 years’ experience in life insurance underwriting at a senior level.
• Experience with life insurance automated underwriting systems is a requirement.
• Life, disability, dread disease and income protection product exposure is a requirement.
• Experience in business process design and business analyst experience an advantage.
• Experience in the design, build, testing and monitoring of underwriting rule trees and engines an advantage.
• Knowledge of PPS systems an advantage.
• Knowledge of PPS products an advantage.

Skills and Attributes:

• Demonstrated ability to prioritise and lead teamwork effort to achieve timely delivery or project milestones through multiple and conflicting objectives.
• Deep knowledge of the underwriting process, underwriting guidelines, automated underwriting programs and underwriting trends.
• Proficiency in Excel pivot tables for analysis.
• Ability to multi-task with strong time management skills.
• Ability to develop and maintain relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in addition to the capacity to listen to stakeholder requirements and express opinions, information and key points of view clearly and assertively.
• Ability to execute specialised work efficiently, with confidence and competence, with above average attention to detail.
• Strong analytical and critical thinking capabilities.
• An affinity for technology and innovation, with strong software skills.

Duties and Responsibilities    

• Development of underwriting content in the Underwriting Rules Engine (URE):
• Collaborate with the Chief Underwriter and Medical Officers to co-design underwriting policies that can be effectively deployed in the URE.
• Design condition specific decision trees to support the application of underwriting policies and product rules for multiple channels in the URE.
• Utilise deep technical knowledge of the URE to guide the Chief Underwriter and Medical Officers on design options that maximise underwriting policy application in the URE.
• Define and design rules within the automated underwriting software that are required for the effective application of the condition decision trees e.g., combined complex condition rules.
• Identify integration points and handoffs between the URE and other applications e.g., workflow, PRO-FiT, and determine requirements for optimal integration within the wider PPS system architecture.
• Develop and maintain design documentation.
• Develop business requirements specifications.
• Develop and maintain change control documentation.
• Oversee the development and testing phases of the URE through the Agile development process.
• Develop testing scenarios and requirements and conduct testing of new developments in the URE.

Optimise effectiveness of the URE:

• Define and document URE performance and business reporting requirements.
• Analyse data and deliver insights to identify opportunities to optimise performance and utilisation.  
• Conduct post implementation review of deployed protocols to ensure these are performing as intended.
• Amend URE decision trees and rules as underwriting policies and product rules are revised.
• Integrate URE automation design with sales and operations business processes to ensure these are effective and efficient.
• Effectively manage IT deliverables related to the URE development, including but not limited to business specifications, development, testing and change control. 

Product Development and Innovation:

• Provide input to Product Development and Operations on product and process improvement opportunities that become evident at underwriting stage and make recommendations on potential solutions.
• Provide automated underwriting specialist input for new product development or special offers.
• Develop and maintain awareness of local and global industry trends and best practice.
• Assess viability of third-party solutions that could enhance and mature PPS’s automated underwriting capability.
• Explore opportunities to enhance PPS’s underwriting philosophy and underwriting practices to secure competitive advantage while appropriate mitigating risk. 

Compliance and audit:

• Design and implement underwriting audit guidelines and procedures.
• Conduct scheduled audits to assess compliance of tele-underwriting with agreed practices.
• Execute compliance control tasks to mitigate risk linked to the URE.
• Make recommendations on opportunities to improve the effectiveness of the tele-underwriting process and develop skill and competence of tele-underwriters.

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 Purpose of the Job:

A professional service agent role, reporting to the Team Manager: PPS Operations. Accountable for providing a professional service to PPS members and associated parties via an inbound contact centre model. This role works strictly on a shift work basis including nightshift work.

Minimum Requirements    

Formal Qualifications:

• Matric (Grade 12)
• A 3-year tertiary qualification (Degree/BTech/National Diploma) with relevant business orientation

Experience and Knowledge: 

• 5 years of experience in an administrative and business coordinating role
• Intermediate knowledge of the Life Assurance or Financial Services industry

Computer Literacy:

• Effective use of MS Office applications (Outlook, Visio, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Projects)

Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Skills:

• Able to excel in a pressurised environment and be a quick thinker that applies logic in decision-making
• Excellent conflict resolution skills to deal with both irate and complimentary members/intermediaries
• Customer-centric, displaying a positive and professional image of PPS by building and maintaining relationships
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English; a good command of the English Language
• A reliable and trustworthy team player
• Good decision-making skills
• Be proactive and can solve problems
• The ability to present product and process information to members/staff on a proactive basis, demonstrating a high level of understanding of the business
• Take ownership of service level standards and ensure they are reached consistently
• Have good telephone etiquette
• Display a strategic level of thinking ability

Duties and Responsibilities    

Main duties and responsibilities:

• Responsible for providing professional service to PPS members and associated parties on the phone in a contact centre.
• To work across all areas in Servicing and Administration with the ability to process in all facets of the department and resolve queries from start to end.
• To be up-skilled and take ownership of their responsibilities within their probation period of 3 months.
• To make decisions within their mandate and execute a higher quality of service combined with increased quantity as per the performance contract.
• To excel in a pressurised environment and be a quick thinker that applies logic in decision making.
• Execute policies and procedures related to service delivery in Operations and between other areas.
• Identify process and procedure improvements and make recommendations to streamline and simplify processes.
• Escalate systems failures to the appropriate support team in order for the team to stay productive.
• Agree duties with team members in order to achieve operational targets including prioritisation and work schedules.