Commercial Director Insurance

Role Description: The Connected Trip Booking.com’s strategic vision for the “Connected Trip” is to create a truly seamless travel experience — one that integrates flights, attractions, car rentals, taxis, insurance products, and more into a single, cohesive journey. While Booking.com has long been a global leader in accommodation, our focus is now on unifying all travel verticals to deliver a streamlined, end-to-end experience for our customers. The Insurance team plays a critical role in this vision. Our mission is to expand and enhance our product offering so travellers can enjoy complete peace of mind when booking any part of their trip. As part of the Trips business unit, Insurance helps bridge the Booking.com of today with the Booking.com of tomorrow—driving the transformation from a single-product company to a multi-product ecosystem. At the heart of this evolution is a more personalised, effortless, and connected travel experience for every customer. Commercial Director, Insurance The Commercial Director, Insurance serves as the second in command for our rapidly growing Insurance team, and a key member of the Insurance Management Team. This role plays a central part in shaping the vertical into a fully successful business through a combination of strategic oversight, management, and individual contribution. This is a highly visible role, interacting with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, from junior colleagues through to LT members, while continuously representing, shaping, and driving the insurance vertical forward. The role requires full ownership of significant parts of the business, with a principal focus on portfolio level commercial management, and internal and external partnering. This goes beyond day-to-day results and extends to market expansion and special projects. All delivered in a compliant manner, within a regulated environment. The role is the owner of our key insurance partnerships. This includes commercial responsibility, management of relationships, and product portfolio oversight. This involves formalising a partnership strategy across the different regions. The role takes on responsibility for strategic planning, such as setting the roadmap, OKRs, and expansion strategy for the vertical, in close collaboration with StratOps, as well as oversight of the budget, and financial forecasting. The role works closely with the Product and Engineering Directors as well as the Risk & Compliance Director to make sure the roadmap and growth are feasible and compliant. The Commercial Director is the primary person responsible for the effective partnering with internal dependent functions (e.g. StratOps, HR, Accounting, Tax, FP&A, Operations (Customer Service, Claims, Complaints and Legal) and key verticals on top of which insurance is offered: Accommodations, Flights, Cars. The leadership scope of this position includes managing a small team of Senior Insurance Managers across commercial and operations and overseeing a broader commercial & operations team of 10+ FTE. The Commercial Director has statutory responsibilities (e.g. Entity directorship, regulated positions, UK/FCA controlled function, NL/AFM policymaker). Key Responsibilities: - Provide strategic oversight of many different parts of the insurance portfolio, including commercial management and day-to-day oversight of commercial and operations. This includes oversight of trading and performance, business partnerships with other Booking.com entities and support functions (e.g. Finance, HR, Legal), as well as product focussed areas. All aimed to support the existing insurance business and drive the future ambitions of the Insurance team. - Manage, inspire, and develop a small team of senior managers and their teams of insurance professionals, fostering high performance, growth and strong execution across the vertical. Always with a customer-centric focus. - Build internal relationships to further embed insurance into the offering and experience of Booking.com customers, both the travellers and suppliers. Using market and customer insights to strengthen our current positioning and build the story with stakeholders and continuously look for new opportunities. - Ownership of our external insurance partnerships (insurance carriers, TPA’s, brokers), including top-level commercial negotiations, day-to-day relationship management, and performance oversight both on trading and operations. - Partner with our strategy teams to deliver a comprehensive insurance strategy and translating those into timelines and resource plans to realise the ambitious goals over the next five years, including the high profile deliveries and new insurance products. - Partner closely with the insurance Risk& Compliance Director, partners, external advisors and regulators to ensure regulatory compliance in every geography. Ideal Experience & Skills: - At least 8 years’ experience within management type roles, with a preference for insurance or financial services experience. - Experience with commercial management, by running a P&L or by managing a commercial team including commercial problem solving, presenting business cases and preparing financial projections. - A proven capability to take high levels of ownership and accountability. - Experience with working in a regulated industry, and understanding of risk management and compliance topics in this context. - Experience of working across geographies and targeting global customers - Excellent in managing stakeholders and relationship management, from internal stakeholders to insurance partners to regulators. - Confident, clear and concise communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts in oral and written communications. - Ability to work in an entrepreneurial ‘start-up’ type environment with moving targets and ambitions within a data-driven tech company.