Director, Underwriting
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Job Description
Director of Underwriting responsible for overseeing life underwriting strategies and managing a team to ensure profitability and compliance within Kemper's initiatives.
Responsibilities:
- Define and execute the long-term underwriting strategy, balancing growth, profitability, and automation goals.
- Provide enterprise oversight of underwriting risk across both manual and automated decisioning, with particular emphasis on governance, controls, and outcomes of rules-based and straight-through processing to ensure appropriate risk selection.
- Establish enterprise-wide underwriting policies, standards, and risk frameworks that ensure regulatory compliance, financial integrity, and alignment with pricing assumptions and defined risk tolerances to support profitable growth.
- Lead and develop underwriting leaders and teams, including direct supervision of the Business Systems Analyst, Underwriting.
- Ensure seamless integration of underwriting policies with the UW Pro rules engine to support high STP rates and appropriate risk tolerances.
- Set and monitor performance metrics for both underwriting outcomes and system-enabled efficiency.
- Champion digital transformation by guiding the configuration and optimization of the UW Pro system in partnership with the BSA and IT teams.
- Drive initiatives to automate underwriting decisions, leveraging analytics and business rules engines to improve speed, accuracy, and customer experience.
- Oversee testing, change management, and audit readiness for system updates and enhancements.
- Partner with executive leadership, actuary, product, legal, and IT to inform risk selection, pricing strategies, and product development.
- Represent the underwriting organization in strategic planning, vendor negotiations, and external stakeholder meetings.
- Stay current on industry trends, regulatory developments, and emerging underwriting technologies, and lead the evaluation and implementation of tools and capabilities that enhance risk assessment, efficiency, and customer experience.
- Build a high-performing, inclusive underwriting culture with clear succession planning and leadership development.
- Provide coaching and career development for managers, underwriters, and the BSA to foster continuous improvement and innovation.
Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, actuarial science, or related field; advanced degree or professional designations (e.g., FALU, FLMI, CLU) strongly preferred.
- 10+ years of progressive life insurance underwriting experience, with at least 5 years in senior management or executive leadership.
- Demonstrated success integrating underwriting strategy with technology platforms and automation initiatives.
- Deep expertise in life underwriting principles, risk assessment, and regulatory requirements.
- Strong understanding of business rules engines or decisioning tools.
- Experience with Sapiens UW Pro and STP (Straight Through Processing) is preferred.
- Exceptional strategic thinking, analytical ability, and executive-level communication skills.
Benefits:
- Qualify for your choice of health and dental plans within your first month.
- Save for your future with robust 401(k) match, Health Spending Accounts and various retirement plans.
- Learn and Grow with our Tuition Assistance Program, paid certifications and continuing education programs.
- Contribute to your community through United Way and volunteer programs.
- Balance your life with generous paid time off and business casual dress.
- Get employee discounts for shopping, dining and travel through Kemper Perks.
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