The Pricewriters Annual Conference for directors, Managers, Pricing Professionals and Analysts 2026

Join Jeremy and Catrin as they open the conference and set the scene for the day ahead.

Hear reflections on the state of the pricing profession and get a glimpse of what the future might hold for pricing teams.

We'll also be running a conference-wide, introvert-friendly interactive challenge, giving everyone the chance to get involved, compare perspectives, and learn something new before the main programme begins.

Whether you're attending for the first time or returning for another year, this session is the perfect way to start the conference. No corporate speeches. Just ideas, discussion, and a bit of fun.

What should pricing teams be paying attention to right now?

AI. Claims inflation. Electric vehicles. Governance. Deployment. Real-time monitoring. The changing relationship between pricing and underwriting.

In this rapid-fire session, Jeremy Keating explores the trends that are shaping insurance pricing today and what they mean for pricing teams tomorrow.

Expect practical insights, market observations, and plenty of discussion as we separate the genuine game changers from the latest industry buzzwords.

With soft market conditions lasting longer than expected and increased regulatory scrutiny, UK insurers are under growing pressure to make a choice: chase growth and sacrifice margin, or rethink how to compete. This session explores three core threats and practical responses that can help insurers thrive.

Most people think motor insurance is the most interesting product line to price. What if they're wrong?

Pet insurance combines the complexity of personal lines, the emotion of healthcare, the unpredictability of customer behaviour and the challenges of a market where competitors can have dramatically different views on risk, value and price.

In this engaging session, Jessica Madhavan makes the case for why pet insurance is the most fascinating, and perhaps the most overlooked, product line in pricing.

Four or five years on from Covid, has pricing work really found its new normal?

In this candid fireside chat, we will look at what is actually happening across the pricing jobs market. Are insurers pushing people back into the office? Are mergers reducing senior opportunities? Are pricing teams becoming leaner, more specialised or simply expected to cover more?

We will also tackle the unavoidable AI question. Are junior roles really disappearing? Is AI governance becoming a core management skill? And which capabilities will matter most as pricing teams become more automated and consolidated?

This is an honest conversation about how pricing careers are changing, what employers now expect and what professionals at every level can do to stay valuable.

Commercial lines pricing has been “about to transform” for quite a long time.
So what is genuinely changing now?
In this panel, we will look at where commercial pricing is making real progress, and where better data, more sophisticated models and new technology are still running into old systems, inconsistent processes and the realities of underwriting judgement.
We will discuss whether AI and automation will finally change how commercial business is priced, how far firms can standardise without losing flexibility, and what the role of the commercial pricing team will look like in the next few years.
Most importantly, we will ask what pricing teams should be doing now, rather than waiting for the future to arrive.

Leading a remote team has hidden challenges, with the potential for new starters feeling isolated, unproductive meetings, social disconnection and ineffective communication. This talk takes five problems that every manager will recognise and pairs with clear actionable fixes, drawn directly from experience. You'll leave with some top tips and ideas that you can start using straight away.

In this presentation we will show how you can make sure your pricing process (and tooling) is more efficient, making sure you and your team can focus on the most important aspects of the process: monitoring, model selection, and pricing decisions. Automatically generate entire model updates that only need your finishing touch, validate monitoring outcomes that are prepared on a regular basis, update a tariff based on these new insights, and deploy with just a press of a button. We will highlight some methods that can help you advance from a (market standard) GLM to automated model fitting using elastic net regression and machine learning methods, whilst still focusing on interpretability. And how can you setup a strong monitoring process?

What becomes of the pricing manager now AI can code, analyse, document and review?

Pricing departments have relied on hiring talented graduates, developing their technical expertise, and promoting the best people through an established hierarchy.

The traditional pricing career path is built around a pyramid:

- Graduates
- Analysts
- Senior Analysts
- Managers
- Chiefs and Heads of Function

But AI is challenging the assumptions behind this structure.

Three competing visions for the future of work are emerging:

Diamond → fewer junior staff, supported by AI, with experienced professionals acting as orchestrators.

Flat Organisation → AI removes layers of management, enabling smaller and more productive teams.

Hourglass → AI automates much of the analytical and managerial work in the middle, concentrating activity at the junior and senior ends of the organisation.

Which of these futures is most likely for pricing? And how should leaders redesign their teams to thrive in an AI-enabled world?

This session examines how AI is likely to reshape pricing organisations over the next decade and provides practical guidance for leaders deciding how to structure teams, develop talent and recruit for the future.