Insurance Underwriter

What is an Insurance Underwriter?

Duties

The duties of an insurance underwriter include the following:

• Develop and maintain good partnerships with clients by notifying them when new products emerge, connecting with them regarding opportunities for improvement and giving them an explanation regarding underwriting decisions made.
• Take stock of and improve the existing marketing plan to enhance business potential – this involves in-person meetings, dissemination of marketing materials on behalf of insurance company partners.
• Keep track of important metrics like renewal retention rates, loss ratio, business hit ratio, etc. and establish corrective action for when applicable.
• Evaluate key reports and documents for the underwriting process like building costs, motor vehicle and inspection logs, etc.

Day In The Life

As an insurance underwriter, you are responsible for deciding whether or not insurance will be provided for a specific case and what the terms were.  It is up to you to make a smart choice and decide on a balanced approach between too conservative and excessively liberal policies. These are vital decisions since insurance companies have to plan for billions in risk every year – if policies are very orthodox, there is a potential for loss while very generous packages require companies to foot excess claims.

In this role, you can choose to hone your expertise in areas like auto, homeowners, marine, health, mortgage, life property and casualty. Commercial and personal policies are the area of specialisation for most property or casualty insurance underwriters. If you are offering package policies, you would be well-versed with all the types.

Work Schedule

Insurance underwriters’ work is mostly office-based and therefore they typically work full-time with a standard working schedule of 40 hours per week. Insurance underwriters rarely have to work longer hours, on evenings or on vacations because of the nature of the profession itself. However, sometimes depending on the client or whatever to be insured that needs assessing, the insurance underwriter may have to travel if the risk has to be evaluated somewhere else. It is however, highly crucial for an insurance underwriter to meet his specified time-frames because of the scale of risk associated.

Projected Job Growth

The demand for this job is expected to decline in the coming decade by at least 6% between 2019 and 2029. The reason for the decline is the recent technological advances that lead to the automation of many of the typical insurance underwriter tasks. These advances made it easier to analyze and assess any potential client, analyze his data and reach a decision. This will only make it essential for an insurance underwriter to master his analytical skills and computer background because the underwriting software will need to be reviewed and updated periodically. This makes the job market for job highly competitive and challenging. Graduates may find significant difficulty in starting their career in this field. Therefore, achieving a good prospect will require in addition to the finance and mathematical degrees, improving the analytical, computer and interpersonal and negotiation skills to secure an edge in this field.

Typical Employers

Insurance underwriting can be considered as more specialization for underwriters focusing on providing insurance services that depend heavily on risk assessment. The most available employers will be insurance agencies providing various insurance service as house, commercial or life insurance. Other employers may include banks that provide some sort of insurance services and loans. You will have to utilize his skills in assessing, evaluating and deciding on the client’s risk to create financial profilers for any potential client. Some Insurance underwriters will prefer to work independently as consultants to businesses and insurance companies, however this will require solid experience and connections in order to establish himself in the field.