We are recruiting a Team Manager to lead an established group of insurance professionals within an SME broking operation in Kent. It is a role for someone who understands the realities of commercial insurance broking, can manage performance without overcomplicating it and knows how to create an environment where capable people are trusted, supported and held to a clear standard.

You may already be managing a broking or service team, or you could be an experienced Senior Account Handler, Senior Broker or Deputy Team Leader who has taken on coaching, workflow and people responsibilities and is ready for a broader management role.

The opportunity

This is a hands-on people management position rather than a role where you simply monitor reports from a distance. You will be close enough to the day-to-day operation to understand what is working, where pressure is building and where individuals need support, while giving experienced insurance professionals the space to do their jobs properly.

A large part of the role is about bringing consistency to the team. That means setting sensible expectations, keeping workloads under control, dealing with performance issues when they arise and helping good people continue to develop.

You will also have visibility across service, quality and commercial performance, so an understanding of how a busy SME insurance team operates will be important.

What you will be responsible for

• You will manage, coach and develop a team of SME insurance professionals, with regular conversations around performance, progression and development.
• You will keep a close view of workloads and capacity, making sure work is allocated sensibly and client service does not suffer when the team becomes busy.
• You will use management information and performance data to understand trends, identify problems early and make practical improvements.
• You will help the team meet its service and commercial objectives without creating an overly target-driven management environment.
• You will maintain appropriate standards around FCA regulation, Consumer Duty and internal quality requirements.
• You will deal constructively with underperformance or capability concerns rather than allowing issues to drift.
• You will support changes to processes and ways of working where there is a clear opportunity to improve efficiency or the client experience.
• You will help identify people with the potential to progress and create opportunities for them to develop their careers.

Who this could suit

You will need a good grounding in commercial insurance, ideally gained within an SME broking environment, together with enough operational understanding to know what good client service and good broking support look like in practice.

Previous line management experience would clearly be useful, although the quality of that experience matters more than the number of people you have managed. You should be comfortable having straightforward performance conversations, developing individuals with different levels of experience and making decisions when priorities compete.

You will also need a sound understanding of FCA expectations and the importance of Consumer Duty within general insurance.

Why consider it?

For an experienced insurance professional, moving into management can sometimes mean becoming detached from the part of the market you understand best. This role offers a different balance. You will remain closely connected to SME commercial insurance while taking genuine ownership of people, performance and how the team operates.

The business can offer the scale and structure of an established insurance organisation, while the role itself remains focused on a defined team where your management style can have a visible effect