UK general insurer scaling pricing and claims analytics on Azure and Snowflake
Hastings Direct operates a two-tier insurance model—retail distribution paired with dedicated underwriting—and is actively staffing a data-centric transformation. The hiring split is heavily skewed toward data roles (63 open), with engineering (31) focused on cloud infrastructure and analytics platforms. Stack concentration in Azure, Snowflake, and Python, combined with active projects around predictive pricing models and enterprise data platforms, signals a shift from manual underwriting toward algorithmic risk assessment and automated claims prediction.
Hastings Group is a UK-based general insurance provider covering car, van, motorbike, home, and pet insurance with over 2.7 million customers. The company operates two integrated businesses: Hastings Insurance Services Limited handles retail pricing, product design, and customer distribution, while Advantage Insurance Company Limited manages underwriting, risk selection, technical pricing, and claims. The group deliberately separates product manufacturing from distribution and maintains relationships with major price-comparison websites and an in-house insurance partner panel. With over 3,400 colleagues across two countries and accelerating hiring velocity, the company is scaling its data and engineering functions to improve pricing accuracy and automate claims workflows.
Core stack: Workday, Azure (including Functions, DevOps, API Management), Snowflake, Python, R, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, React, .NET Core. Monitoring via Dynatrace, Grafana, Azure Monitor. Currently adopting Azure Functions.
Active projects center on pricing: predictive models, actuarial models, rating factor engineering, and a market-leading pricing platform. Supporting infrastructure: Snowflake/Azure enterprise data platform, data platform engineering CoE, policy administration system, and fraud detection capabilities.
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