Small Business Senior Underwriter (Central Zone)

Job Summary

The Commercial Lines Small Business Senior Underwriter, working under minimal supervision, represents the company among a defined territory of agencies with responsibility for the managing and servicing of a profitable renewal book of Commercial Lines business, while working to grow and strengthen technical underwriting ability. The role focuses on learning and mastering underwriting skills and actively participate in the monthly renewal strategy meeting. The role acts as an Account Steward for the customer and as a key point of contact for the agency, maintaining and implementing appropriate service strategies to deliver our customer service commitment to the customer. The role makes responsible decisions regarding risk acceptability and pricing and escalate issues as needed. The role also provides an agency service and maintain intra-company communications.

Job Responsibilities

• Manages the underwriting profitability growth and retention of new and renewal business that is consistent with underwriting strategies.
• Collects appropriate and accurate information required to assess potential clients and decides on the acceptable risk for a policy.
• Compares various policies having similar risk undertaking and conducts actuarial studies to decide on the company's loss records.
• Develops relationships with agencies, producers, and other distribution partners (producers) and works to understand their needs.
• Leverages portfolio underwriting of the book and territory leveraging analytics and information garnered through BI and other sources.
• Provides leadership with feedback on product, pricing and rate/rule activities of the competition and reviews high value inspections for assigned agencies.
• Strives to create and build effective communication externally (between agents and company) and internally (within the company) regarding underwriting procedures and practices, growth/profit goals and objectives, and agency relations.
• Negotiates with agents to reach positive and profitable outcomes and coordinates and owns agency business plans and key activities with oversight from Region Leader.
• Develops and maintains an operating knowledge of Westfield standardized hardware, software programs, third party software, and processing procedures.
• Influences current and prospective agencies, producers, and other distribution partners to represent and promote Westfield products and services to customers.
• Answers questions from agencies, producers, distribution partners policyholders or other external contacts and escalates issues to leadership as necessary.
• Collaborates with and leverages corporate shared services functions to bring the competitive strategy to life and achieve results; aligns with corporate governance while maintaining a singular focus on the customer.

Job Qualifications

• 3-5 years of Commercial Underwriting experience.
• Bachelor's degree in related field and/or commensurate work experience.

Behavioral Competencies

• Collaborates
• Customer focus
• Communicates effectively
• Decision quality
• Nimble learning

Technical Skills

• Insurance Industry Knowledge
• Financial Controls
• Commercial Lines Underwriting
• Underwriting Strategy
• Data Analysis and Reporting
• Risk Management
• Customer Service Management

This job description describes the general nature and level of work performed in this role. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, skills, responsibilities, knowledge, etc. These may be subject to change and additional functions may be assigned as needed by management.