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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Underwriting Supervisor

💰 $ - $

InsuranceUnderwritingManagement

🎯 Role Definition

The Underwriting Supervisor leads and develops a team of underwriters to evaluate, price, and accept risk across assigned insurance product lines. This role combines deep technical underwriting knowledge, people leadership, operational excellence, and stakeholder collaboration to ensure profitable portfolio growth, compliance with underwriting guidelines, and exceptional service to distribution partners. The Underwriting Supervisor balances day-to-day case decisions with longer-term initiatives such as pricing refinement, workflow automation, and continuous improvement of risk selection.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Underwriter / Lead Underwriter
  • Commercial Underwriter (mid-senior level)
  • Insurance Analyst or Underwriting Analyst

Advancement To:

  • Underwriting Manager
  • Head of Underwriting / Director of Underwriting
  • Chief Underwriting Officer or Senior Product Leader

Lateral Moves:

  • Risk Management Analyst
  • Product Manager (Insurance Products)
  • Broker & Distribution Relationship Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Supervise, coach, and develop a team of underwriters, providing day-to-day guidance on complex submissions, conducting regular 1:1s, delivering constructive performance feedback, and creating individualized development plans to build underwriting capability and career progression.
  • Review and approve complex or higher-limit submissions within delegated authority, ensuring decisions align with the company’s underwriting guidelines, pricing strategy, and risk appetite while documenting rationale for auditability.
  • Manage the underwriting authority matrix, recommending changes to authority levels based on demonstrable team performance, market conditions, and calibration exercises.
  • Ensure strict adherence to underwriting guidelines, mandatory endorsements, and compliance requirements by implementing controls, conducting regular file audits, and addressing non-compliance with corrective action plans.
  • Lead technical underwriting reviews for specialty or difficult-to-place risks (e.g., large commercial accounts, accounts with prior losses, unusual exposures), coordinating loss control, actuarial, and reinsurance input when needed.
  • Drive portfolio performance by monitoring key metrics (loss ratio, combined ratio, hit/skip ratio, new business mix), generating actionable insights, and implementing yield and retention initiatives to optimize profitability.
  • Partner with Pricing and Actuarial teams to translate rate changes, predictive models, and segmentation outputs into practical underwriting rules, appetite statements, and training materials for the team.
  • Collaborate with Sales, Brokers, and Distribution partners to clarify underwriting decisions, negotiate terms, and support relationship-building activities that preserve client satisfaction while protecting margin.
  • Lead case triage and workflow prioritization to ensure high-value submissions receive timely attention, reduce cycle times, and meet SLA targets for turnaround and policy issuance.
  • Oversee quality assurance processes, including peer reviews, periodic case sampling, and root-cause analyses of underwriting errors or adverse outcomes, and implement remediation and training.
  • Coordinate with Claims to identify emerging loss trends, manage reserving implications, and incorporate claims feedback into underwriting rules and risk selection criteria.
  • Manage delegated authority programs and MGA/MGU relationships, conducting quarterly reviews, auditing underwriting files, and ensuring delegated partners comply with contractual obligations and company standards.
  • Support reinsurance placement activities by preparing submission materials, explaining portfolio composition and risk controls to reinsurers, and working with reinsurance brokers to secure favorable terms.
  • Implement digital underwriting initiatives and workflow automation (e.g., rules engines, straight-through processing) by partnering with IT and vendor teams to reduce manual effort and improve scalability.
  • Develop and maintain underwriting manuals, procedural guides, and knowledge bases to ensure consistent application of policy language, exclusions, and rating practices across the team.
  • Lead recruitment, onboarding, and workforce planning to ensure appropriate staffing levels, skill mix, and bench strength to absorb peak workloads or strategic growth initiatives.
  • Prepare and present monthly and quarterly underwriting performance reports to senior management, highlighting trends, corrective actions, new opportunities, and forecasts against targets.
  • Manage operational budgets and resource allocation for the underwriting team, including training budgets, technology investments, and staffing costs.
  • Investigate potential fraud indicators and coordinate with SIU (Special Investigations Unit) or compliance teams to escalate suspicious cases and safeguard company assets.
  • Drive continuous improvement projects (Lean, Six Sigma, or equivalent) to streamline workflows, reduce manual touchpoints, and enhance data capture for analytics and decision support.
  • Serve as subject matter expert for regulatory and compliance examinations related to underwriting practices, providing documentation, answering queries, and implementing corrective action plans as required.
  • Mentor team members in advanced risk assessment techniques, loss control evaluation, and commercial underwriting judgment to increase decision quality and speed.
  • Facilitate cross-functional working groups with Product, Marketing, IT, and Finance to launch new products, market pilots, or geographic expansions, ensuring underwriting capacity and controls are in place.
  • Manage escalated customer or broker complaints related to underwriting decisions, working to resolve disputes professionally while protecting underwriting integrity and contractual obligations.
  • Maintain up-to-date knowledge of market dynamics, competitor appetite, and regulatory changes that could impact risk selection, pricing, or product strategy; translate market intelligence into actionable underwriting adjustments.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc analytics and reporting requests from senior leadership related to portfolio segmentation, loss drivers, or retention patterns.
  • Contribute to the organization’s underwriting strategy, including territory appetite, industry specialization, and product bundling initiatives.
  • Collaborate with training and HR to develop technical and soft-skill curricula for underwriting staff, including certification sponsorships and practical workshops.
  • Participate in technology vendor selection and user acceptance testing for underwriting platforms, rating tools, and document management systems.
  • Assist in designing and testing underwriting rule updates, business logic, and automation scenarios to improve straight-through processing accuracy.
  • Provide subject matter input into RFP responses and competitive tenders where underwriting capability or authority is a selection criterion.
  • Support ad-hoc investigations into portfolio concentration, catastrophic exposure, and enterprise risk metrics when requested by Enterprise Risk Management.
  • Serve as backup liaison for reinsurance submissions and renewals during peak cycles or senior staff absences.
  • Contribute to community and industry events as a company representative on underwriting best practices, panels, or association working groups.
  • Maintain and update the underwriting escalation matrix, ensuring business continuity and clear points of contact for operational decisions.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Advanced commercial underwriting expertise across assigned lines (e.g., commercial property, general liability, casualty, professional liability) with an emphasis on risk selection and pricing discipline.
  • Strong risk assessment and exposure analysis skills, including evaluation of financial statements, operations, contract provisions, and prior loss history.
  • Proficiency with underwriting systems and policy administration platforms (examples: Guidewire, Duck Creek, Sapiens, or comparable systems); ability to support configuration and user requirements.
  • Hands-on experience with rating/pricing tools, binder management, and authority delegation processes.
  • Data literacy: comfortable with Excel (advanced formulas, pivot tables, Power Query), experience with business intelligence tools (Tableau, Power BI) and familiarity with SQL or analytics concepts for portfolio review.
  • Knowledge of reinsurance structures and treaty placement processes to support facultative and treaty submissions.
  • Familiarity with regulatory requirements, insurance law basics, and compliance practices relevant to underwriting jurisdiction(s).
  • File review and audit skills, including documenting decision rationale, identifying control gaps, and implementing remediation.
  • Experience with loss control and risk mitigation strategies, including coordination with loss control teams and third-party vendors.
  • Ability to interpret actuarial and pricing outputs and convert them to practical underwriting rules and appetite statements.
  • Familiarity with fraud indicators, E&O exposures, and industry-specific compliance (e.g., Lloyd’s, NAIC, Solvency II where applicable).

Soft Skills

  • Strong leadership and people management skills: coaching, performance management, and talent development experience.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills for clear documentation, broker negotiations, and executive reporting.
  • Decisive judgment and problem-solving: ability to make timely underwriting decisions under ambiguity and escalate appropriately.
  • Stakeholder management and collaboration across Sales, Claims, Actuarial, IT, and Reinsurance partners.
  • Client- and broker-facing professionalism with negotiation skills and the ability to explain complex underwriting rationale.
  • Analytical mindset with attention to detail and a continuous improvement orientation.
  • Time management and prioritization under competing deadlines and seasonal workload spikes.
  • Change management capability to lead adoption of new tools, processes, and guidelines.
  • Ethical integrity and a strong compliance orientation in all underwriting actions.
  • Coaching and mentoring aptitude with a focus on building team technical capability and autonomy.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Risk Management, Insurance, Economics, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA), Risk Management, or actuarial-related field.
  • Professional insurance designations such as CPCU, ACII, AU, ARe, or equivalent are highly desirable.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Risk Management and Insurance
  • Finance / Accounting
  • Business Administration
  • Actuarial Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 5–10 years of progressive underwriting experience, with at least 2–4 years in a supervisory or team lead role.

Preferred:

  • 7+ years of underwriting experience including proven experience managing commercial lines teams, experience with complex/large account placement, and demonstrated success in improving portfolio performance and operational metrics.
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