Head of Distribution Strategy & Sales Governance

The opportunity:

We have an exciting opportunity for a Distribution Strategy & Sales Governance to join the Markel UK Broker team. This is a hybrid working role which will involve some travel to our Leeds & London offices, so we can base this from any of our offices - Leeds, Manchester or Birmingham.

The Head of Distribution Strategy & Sales Governance (Broker) is a pivotal leadership role responsible for overseeing the strategic direction, operational effectiveness, and regulatory compliance of broker distribution channels (Open market, Digital and Schemes) This position ensures that all sales activities, partnerships, and broker relationships align with the organisation’s objectives, compliance requirements, and best practice standards. The role requires a strong blend of commercial foresight, governance expertise, and partner management skills.

The role will report into the Divisional Director for Broker. This requires strong management across both the underwriting and distribution teams along with proposition and marketing. There is exposure to strategic thinking and innovation – in order to identify new opportunities and ways of doing things and work with underwriting to stretch our thinking. The role will be a key figure head in the market for Markel for schemes development and a key part of the senior leadership team in the broker team.

What you’ll be doing:

• Strategy Development: Develop and implement the broker distribution strategy in alignment with Markels commercial objectives and growth targets

• Sales Governance: Design and implement robust governance frameworks to ensure all broker sales activities adhere to regulatory, legal, and company standards

• Performance Management: work with the Head of Strategic Sales to set and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) for broker sales teams, driving continuous improvement and accountability

• Regulatory Compliance: Act as the primary point of contact for all matters relating to sales compliance, ensuring timely adaptation to regulatory changes and industry best practices

• Broker Relationship Management: Build and maintain strong, productive relationships with key broker partners, fostering trust and collaboration for renumeration/ISA’s

• Accountability for broker proposition – development and continuous improvement

• Risk Management: Identify, assess, and mitigate risks within the broker sales channel, ensuring effective internal controls are in place

• Training & Development: Oversee the development and delivery of training programmes to ensure broker Distribution teams are fully equipped in compliance, product knowledge, and sales effectiveness

• Stakeholder Engagement: Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, including Legal, Compliance, Underwriting, Marketing and Product teams, to support business objectives

• Reporting & Insights: Provide regular updates and actionable insights to senior management on broker performance, compliance issues, and emerging risks

Our must haves:

• Have previous experience within the General Insurance industry and working with the senior leadership and placement teams of large, sophisticated brokers with a UK footprint of offices

• Distribution experience – including strategy setting, framework development and implementation of change

• Demonstrable experience and success in roles with a Distribution/ development focus and have a proven track record of delivery against new business and portfolio growth targets and objectives

• Understanding of project management techniques and stakeholder management of both internal and external stakeholders

• Show a high level of competence in the use of data  to robustly performance manage Distribution delivery and instigate corrective action as necessary

• Possess a high standard of presentation skills including the ability to differentiate these according to audience and target outcome

• We are looking for challenging, self-starting,  and success oriented individuals who bring expertise, initiative and a desire to build a market-leading business

• To be a creditable and engaging representative of Markel, in order to cultivate long term relationships within the industry

Who we are:

Markel Corporation (NYSE – MKL) a Fortune 500 company with over 60 offices in 20+ countries, is a holding company for insurance, reinsurance, specialist advisory and investment operations around the world.

We’re all about people | We win together | We strive for better | We enjoy the everyday | We think further

What’s in it for you:

• A great starting salary plus generous annual bonus & strong benefits package…

• 25 days paid holiday plus Bank Holidays, with the opportunity to buy / sell extra leave

• Fantastic company pension scheme, private medical and dental cover, life assurance, travel insurance cover, income protection, season ticket loan as well as other great benefits on offer

• There are countless opportunities to learn new skills and develop in your career, and we can provide the support needed to do just that!

Are you ready to play your part?

Choose ‘Apply Now’ to fill out our short application, so that we can find out more about you.

Markel celebrates the value of a diverse workforce that brings experience and expertise from a wide variety of backgrounds and life circumstances. Whatever your background, if you feel you meet the requirements of this role then we want to hear from you. We are also happy to consider candidates who are looking for flexible working patterns.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided with all reasonable accommodations to be able to participate in the job application or interview process and to perform essential job functions if successful. Please contact us via email at rec@markel.com or call us at 0161 507 5827 to request any accommodations that may be needed. This includes any alternative formats of any documents or information on how to apply offline.

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