Willis Towers Watson's Insurance, Risk and Reinsurance segment consists of four different streams:
1. Investment Consulting Stream
WTW’s investment consulting stream aims to create sustainable competitive advantage for clients in their investment portfolios. This is delivered to clients by providing expert advice on their investment and decision-making processes. In this role, you would:
- Ensure that portfolios are tailored to their goals, are cost effective and deliver strong returns with controlled risk
- You’ll be supported in achieving either a CFA or Actuarial qualification
- Work in one of the teams within this stream. The teams are: Advisory Investment Services, Delegated Investment Services, Specialist Portfolio Solutions, and Management Research
Requirements
- 2.1 degree in any discipline
- Some teams may look for a 2.1 degree in a numerate discipline or A/B in A Level Mathematics
An Investment graduate, Louis Ivers, lets us know what skills are important in the role:
‘I would say that being personable is a key skill, whether you need to interact with another line of business or reach out to a client for information it is useful to be comfortable with being on the phone or drafting up emails. Also, your colleagues are aware that a lot of the information and WTW processes are new, but you need to be able to ask questions or for help if you require it! Having a somewhat technical mindset is helpful, as different clients use different WTW tools and reporting. Some of these involve understanding Excel functions or modelling portfolios. Whilst training is given, particularly on Excel, during your first few months, it would be handy if you’re comfortable with data manipulation or Excel in general.’
2. Insurance Consulting Stream
Insurance consultants advise and provide solutions to insurance companies on the assessment and management of risk. Their client base includes more than three-quarters of the world’s leading insurers.
Requirements
- Technically and mathematically minded, with the ability to solve intricate problems using innovative and proportionate approaches
- Consultants need to be able to communicate complex concepts to audiences from a variety of backgrounds. Each audience has different needs and knowledge and you would need to tailor your communications to suit
3. Insurance Technology Stream (Software Development)
People within this stream deliver new software to business clients and the many hundreds of internal consultant users in the Risk Consulting and Software Line of business. This is a varied role in which you would:
- Discuss functionality with consultants, proposing solutions and generating prototypes
- Understanding and coding algorithms, ensuring that time and memory constraints are satisfied
- Iterating User Interfaces and researching new technologies and tools
- Understand clients’ needs and how to solve these
- Develop high performance software using various technologies on multiple platforms
- Create an engaging user experience
- Deliver quality through the use of the latest test and automation techniques
- Work within small agile teams and collaborate
- Learn how software is produced and experience all aspects of the industry’s best practices
Requirements
- 2.1 degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or similar technical or analytic discipline
- Reasonable understanding of Mathematics
Desirable experience/skills
- Experience in software development
- Experience of writing software in an object-oriented mainstream language (C#, Java)
- Appreciation of various technologies and algorithm and software performance
Here’s some insight from Niamh Carr, a Director in the Life Insurance team within the Insurance Consulting and Technology business at Willis Towers Watson:
‘As a member of the management team, I spend quite a bit of time considering how we can best support our team in areas such as career development, for example by giving them the chance to take on a more senior role on a project or offering them additional training in certain areas. I also enjoy the flexibility to work part-time, which gives me more time to spend with my two young sons, so on a Friday you’ll find me with them!’
4. Reinsurance Stream (known as Willis Re)
WTW is one of the world’s leading reinsurance advisory and broking businesses. Connecting risk and capital, the company helps the global insurance industry, governments and societies manage and mitigate extreme risk. This can range from natural catastrophes such as floods and earthquakes to technological or political risks such as cyber and terrorism. In this role, you would:
- Bring together advanced analytics, risk transfer and transactional expertise to provide advisory and consultation to clients on how their risk portfolios impact performance. Execute on those capabilities to deliver improved financial results.