Personal Lines Underwriting Consulting Director

Job Description

Join a team of diverse professionals at Farmers to acquire skills on the job and apply your learned knowledge to future roles at Farmers. Farmers Insurance also offers extensive training opportunities through the award winning University of Farmers named by Training magazine amongst top 10 corporate training units in the world.
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• Responsible for overall execution of new and diverse strategic underwriting and Personal Line projects as assigned including quality, cost, schedule, and results.
• Develops underwriting strategy and execution to improve results, processes, and technologies on company and Personal Lines major initiatives.
• Will work closely with Service operations and serves as the agent and customer facing arm of the underwriting team.
• Primary responsibilities are to insure the portfolio is correctly classified, flows are efficient and effective helping agents to grow profitably.

• Responsible for strategic underwriting direction and development.
• Takes the business vision and direction, and through analysis of the underwriting processes and metrics develops a vision and direction for underwriting.
• Determines appropriate business levers to accomplish business goals and manages and directs that change throughout the organization.
• Responsible for overall execution of new and diverse strategic underwriting and Personal Line projects as assigned including quality, cost, schedule, and results.
• Applies policy processing and business rules technical expertise to help design, implement, and execute Underwriting initiatives.
• These projects involve significant return and risk to the Company as well as substantial financial investment.
• The position requires strategy and proposition development to influence and gain senior leadership sponsorship of these strategic projects Deployment of these project include implementing budget control (IT and Business combined), coordinating multiple & diverse function/departments, forecasting the impact to Agents and customers (directly or indirectly), and involves understanding complex business, legal or regulatory issues.
• Typical Departments/Teams involved in the execution of these Programs are diverse and can include various departments within Personal Lines, external business units, Consultants/Contractors, Distribution, Marketing, Corporate Communications, Legal Regulatory Affairs, Claims, and Corporate Risk Management.
• Manages the overall execution of projects to ensure they are completed in accordance with the project plan and business strategic and/or tactical objectives.
• Accountable to executive sponsor for developing the project and achieving the business result.
• Directs a multi-functional project team ensuring adequate support is provided to the project and timely execution is accomplished.
• Develops project organizational structure based on the overall objective of the project. Organizes and mobilizes project teams which may be comprised of internal and external resources.
• This is accomplished by ensuring: detailed technical designs are completed by the IT resources, development/programming is completed in accordance with the project plans, testing plans are completed and all required testing is successfully executed, training plans and associated materials are developed for ServicePoints, Agents and other personnel as required.
• Field implementation plans are completed and the assignment associated with the project are considered and addressed. Customer impact is understood and managed.
• Legal and regulatory associated with the project are considered and addressed. Develops and maintains project master plan in conjunction with team leads that outlines tasks, milestones, and schedules.
• Accountable for recommending and deploying strategic efficiency improvements in underwriting business processes and IT systems to drive cost improvements, speed, and ease of doing business.
• Applies knowledge across multiple platforms, processes and architecture to develop and implement projects and process design.
• Responsible for identification of new technologies and processes to improve business efficiencies, costs, and customer experience. Serves as Underwriting business representative on organizational and Personal Lines business unit projects.
• In this capacity provides strategic analysis of underwriting metrics and processes to make recommendations. Underwriting liaison to Commercial, Foremost, and 21st underwriting units to understand emerging trends, use of new UW techniques, tools, and systems.
• Assists the Head of Personal Lines Underwriting in setting strategy and business goals including the determining the allocation of resources, workload management & project prioritization, and optimizing the department budget.
• Manages multi-million dollar project budgets to ensure execution is completed within allocated funding. Communicates with Senior Executives regarding all project related matters via status reports, discussions session and presentations.
• Provides weekly status updates and recommendations to Head of Personal Lines Underwriting, Contracts, and Compliance.
• Responsible for attracting talent into the organization. Accountable for developing talent for the benefit of the organization by understanding individual development needs and ensuring the appropriate development activities are in place and functioning with the goal of exporting that talent to promotional opportunities in the organization.
• Performs duties as assigned.

Bachelor's degree required preferably. Master's degree preferred. Advanced industry designations are a plus.

• Five years experience in a managerial position.
• Demonstrated leadership experience and skills.
• Strong policy processing and business rules technical expertise.
• Experience with developing IT system processes.
• Demonstrated critical and strategic thinking skills.
• Ability to understand the vision and direction of the business to develop and execute a plan to achieve business results.
• Strong interpersonal communication skills, including verbal, written, and platform skills particularly Guidewire/Policycenter.

• Ten years in one or more of the following: underwriting, customer/product management, marketing, insurance compliance/regulatory affairs, and/or insurance.
• Working knowledge of advanced insurance underwriting, pricing concepts, compliance and regulatory issues, strategy, insurance terms and structure, and insurance products.
• Five years experience working in a managerial role with responsibility for multiple projects, process design, and execution of complex projects.
• Problem solving, critical thinking, planning and communications skills are preferred.
• Candidate should have a good understanding or data, predictive modeling and 3^rd party data.

Farmers is an equal opportunity employer, committed to the strength of a diverse workforce.