Exposure Risk Performance

Stephanie explains how collaborative practices and the opportunity to work in a number of different disciplines has created a culture of well-rounded people able to review and assess risk from all angles.

In Spring 2023, almost eleven years into her tenure at Chaucer, Stephanie Nightingale received her fifth promotion to become the company’s Head of Exposure Risk Management. Having previously held roles within Actuarial, Underwriting Risk Management, Risk Management, Exposure Management and Capital Modelling, Stephanie’s broad experience at the company has given her a thorough grounding and knowledge of both multi-disciplinary risk management, and the company itself.

Stephanie’s is one of the many success stories Chaucer retains; those who have stayed with the company from graduate trainee scheme through to a management role, so evidently the process of embedding people and creating leaders, works well.

Stephanie joined in 2012 on the scheme and as someone who had not previously considered the insurance market, not planning to follow in her father’s footsteps as many do, joining Chaucer came as something of a surprise. She describes the experience at the interviews stage as “the most comfortable I’ve ever felt at an assessment centre. It was welcoming and the graduate from the year above who came into talk to us was really engaging”, she says, “the session just felt really good compared to all the others”.

One of the things she believes graduates – and other experienced joiners - appreciate about Chaucer is that the company allows their people to keep developing and picking up different skills and responsibilities. Stephanie explains that there are many people who have worked in several teams, diversified, and applied their skills to different role, which leads to a well-rounded workforce.

Stephanie attributes part of her success to having had such broad exposure to many of the teams who work behind the scenes in insurance such as risk analysis and control, supporting the underwriting and claims functions, who are market-facing. She explains the value each of the teams have in keeping the business flowing and profitable.

"Exposure management considers our risk from a specific point of view of underwriting risk, thinking about catastrophe risk, for example, where we'll get claims in extreme events. Whilst this mostly means looking at major 1 in 200, 1 in 250, 1 in 500-year events – usually natural catastrophe events like major hurricanes or earthquakes - it can also encompass things like a terrorist event in big cities. We use different models and tools on this data to inform our underwriting and help brokers understand our risk appetite”.

It is clear that having experience with each of these areas of the business puts her in a good position, but now as a leader of the Exposure Management team, her calm and considered personality is evidently valuable to collaboration and managing these relationships, reviewing the extent of risk the company faces with a clear head and reporting upwards accordingly.

“My role is to oversee all these different catastrophe events and being aware of what's going on within the wider business which may impact what we may or may not need to look at. I look for improvement and streamlining opportunities, reviewing our modelling capabilities, and communicating with all of our senior stakeholders to ensure that we are meeting all of our different expectations.”

Another aspect of Stephanie’s career progression that played a part in her development, was the Postgraduate certificate in Natural Hazards that she gained from UCL, sponsored by Chaucer, and studied alongside her full-time job.

“I'd identified a gap of my knowledge on the exposure management side, and wanted to learn more about the science underlying the weather which controls so much of our risk exposure. It worked out well for when the role came up for Head of Exposure Management.”

Another thing Stephanie has noticed in the decade she has grown at the company, is the variety of people and backgrounds that associates now come from, academically and vocationally.

“Although there is, of course, importance placed on education, we are moving away from a purely scientific, geographical background and are considering how other backgrounds can assist with our non-weather risks, for example in the realms of political risk and violence.

The makeup of the whole company is different from ten years ago. Whilst there are many like me who stay for a long time, we also see people coming into insurance that never would have considered it before, from quite different demographics and different backgrounds. That said, the industry should still be more diverse than it is now.

It's important we don't just get stuck in a mentality of ‘we'll do it like this because that's how we've always done it".

As for what is next, Stephanie enjoys working on the bigger picture, and hopes her career will continue to progress at Chaucer.

“We're only in the first quarter of the year, but we're already starting to think about the business planning process. Whilst I love doing core things well and improving practices such as regulatory processes to provide clearer information to senior management, I also enjoy working on the more high-level strategic side of the business. I hope I can contribute to this more in time.”