Insurance Risk & Compliance Officer

Job Title : Insurance Risk & Compliance Manager

Location: Amsterdam (Relocation support available)

Travel Required

Company Background

Headquartered in Amsterdam, Booking.com, the flagship subsidiary of Booking Holdings, is the world’s largest accommodation booking platform. Through its world-class e-commerce platform, the company transacts around 1.5milion room night reservations per day, is active in over 200 countries and deals with customers in more than 40 languages, demonstrating a truly global presence.

The mission of Booking.Com is to “Empower People to Discover the World” and this is based on a fundamental belief that travel is a cause for good. The company is driven by the need to deliver 1st class customer service with a seamless and enjoyable booking experience at the heart of its delivery.

The Team

As part of our Connected Trip ambition, Booking.com wants to ensure that customers have peace of mind when booking their travel - particularly in uncertain times. Part of this ambition is the delivery of insurance products to give our customers assurance that there is protection, should anything happen.

Our Transportation unit already has a mature insurance business aimed at offering its car rental customers’ this peace of mind, and we are planning to use this as a springboard on which to build further. We seek to unify our insurance resources, and build a foundation on which to deliver insurance products to all of our segments, including: Accommodations, transportation, and attractions.

Booking.com has ambitious growth plans for the insurance business. Example opportunities include traditional areas such as travel protection, alongside new categories, such as home-sharing protection for our vacation rental segment.

The key strategic aims are to: Build an insurance operating model that can deliver to our insurance requirements, and to use this to expand and grow a global footprint of general insurance product offerings throughout the Group. Through innovation and industry sector knowledge and single-threaded focus, the challenge is to substantially enhance the group’s customer Insurance experience and drive a profitable account.

The Role

We are seeking insurance or financial services professionals who have a global outlook, superior compliance experience, and broad knowledge of multiple regulatory jurisdictions.

The role itself will involve designing, building, and maintaining an effective insurance risk & compliance operation within Booking.com. The role will involve a mixture of insurance and non-insurance specific topics. Insurance topics will include: new product development, sales, customer service, claims, regulatory management, licensing, employee competency and integrity, and partner compliance. Non-insurance topics will include: Data Protection, FinCrime (AML, KYC, sanctions, external fraud), and corporate compliance (investigations, whistleblowing, internal fraud). Non-insurance topics will largely be collaborating with the wider Booking Holdings organisation, whilst Insurance topics will need to be built from the ground up.

The chosen candidate will need the ability to work across multiple local jurisdictions and be able to pick up quickly on regulatory requirements and market practice.

Knowledge and experience of working in regulated industries and designing functions is a must. 2nd line experience is key - either in risk management, or compliance.

Internally, the candidate will work closely with all facets of the business, and in close partnership with the legal function.

The role will suit someone with a start-up mentality, who is keen to build an organisation from the ground up (with a lot of help), and can balance immediate requirements with a long term vision.

Key Responsibilities

• Building a risk and compliance operation: Design, implementation and oversight of the Insurance Risk and Compliance landscape.
• New product development: Understanding the viability of new products from a regulatory and risk perspective in partnership with legal, to provide advice to 1st line product insurance managers and product teams.
• Insurance product rollout: Working with legal counsel, external advisors and regulators to ensure regulatory compliance in every geography - global compliance rollout forms a key pillar of the work to be done
• 2nd Line Risk Oversight: Designing frameworks to oversee 1st line activities, such as customer service and quality assurance, claims, complaints, sales, product disclosures, etc.
• Regulatory compliance: Maintaining the portfolio of licenses and regulatory relationships that allow Booking.com to distribute insurance.
• Regulatory trends: Market monitoring of regulatory trends to ensure continued compliance, coordinating responses to regulatory changes, and being the first point of contact for group compliance’s regulatory change management programme.
• Partnership and escalation with Legal: Work closely with legal counsel on external regulatory reviews and complex case referral.
• Employee compliance: Oversight of employee competency requirements, incident reporting, employee training and rollout.
• Complaints management: Regulatory response and oversight of customer complaints to regulators / ombudsman.
• General compliance: Working with the Booking Holdings organisation on Data Protection, FinCrime, and Corporate Compliance related topics.
• Risk Control: working with the wider group risk management team to appropriately integrate with enterprise risk, and coordinate risk assessments and mitigation actions within the insurance vertical.
• Compliance governance and reporting: coordinating the programme of insurance compliance and risk meetings, preparing the relevant briefing materials and reports, and supporting the development of improved MI, tools, and ways of working.
• Working with and through the Booking.com regulated insurance entity, brokers, Third Party Administrators (TPAs) and insurance carriers, to deliver for customers.

Skills & Experience

• Educated to a degree level or equivalent
• At least 5 years’ experience within the insurance or financial services industry
• At least 3 years’ experience within 2nd line risk & compliance functions
• Experience with working in a regulated industry, and understanding of risk management and compliance topics in this context
• Experience in managing interactions with regulators / ombudsman
• Experience of working across multiple geographies and jurisdictions
• Someone who can build an organisation from the ground up

Desirable Skills & Experience

• Experience of working in 2nd line risk or compliance function in an insurer, MGA, or insurance intermediary/broker
• Detailed knowledge of European insurance regulation across multiple jurisdictions
• Experience in the design and launch of new insurance products, with global rollouts
• Ability to work in a technology company, with an understanding of product management and build