Vice President, Underwriting - Employee Benefits

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Leadership & Underwriting Excellence

Serve as the underwriting leader for all Employee Benefits products, ensuring consistent, profitable, and market‑competitive underwriting strategies.

Drive underwriting governance, guidelines, philosophy, and portfolio performance.

Partner with Product, Distribution, Actuarial, Finance, and Operations to align underwriting strategy with market growth ambitions.

Provide thought leadership in emerging market trends, pricing needs, and competitive dynamics, particularly in the small business segment.

Define and maintain the EB Underwriting Governance Framework, ensuring consistent decision-making and clear risk-appetite management.

Use UW insights to influence EB divisional strategy, portfolio mix and pricing approaches.

2. Build & Scale a High‑Performing Underwriting Organization

Lead, mentor, and develop a multi‑level underwriting team across product lines.

Recruit top‑tier talent and build a future‑ready team highly skilled in data‑driven and automated underwriting.

Establish clear performance expectations, career paths, and succession planning within the underwriting function.

Establish management and departmental governance routines that ensure consistent execution and performance accountability.

Develop a leadership bench and structured succession plans across all tiers of UW leadership.

3. Complex Case & Aggregation Underwriting

Oversee underwriting strategy and execution for large, complex aggregation opportunities such as:

PEOs (Professional Employer Organizations)

Payroll companies

General Agencies (GAs)

National brokers

Develop scalable, repeatable frameworks for evaluating aggregator risk, pricing, guarantees, and block‑on‑block underwriting.

Deeply understand distribution economics and underwriting levers within the aggregator ecosystem.

Define aggregator specific governance standards to ensure disciplined growth, pricing alignment and controlled risk exposure.

4. Technology, Data, Automation, and AI Enablement

Champion adoption of modern underwriting technologies, automated risk engines, and AI‑driven decision support tools.

Collaborate with Technology partners to build digital underwriting workflows, rules engines, dashboards, and analytics capabilities.

Improve quote‑to‑bind cycle time, accuracy, and consistency through automation and modernization.

Use data insights to inform risk selection, segmentation, pricing recommendations and performance improvement.

5. Process Design, Operational Rigor & Continuous Improvement

Architect underwriting processes that scale—from intake to risk assessment to issuance.

Establish efficient workflows for small‑business underwriting while ensuring appropriate segmentation for larger or complex cases.

Implement process controls, audit routines, and quality assurance practices.

Partner with Operations to ensure downstream processes (policy issue, servicing, billing) align with underwriting requirements.

Define underwriting quality thresholds and embed continuous improvement routines

6. Stakeholder Leadership & Cross‑Functional Partnership

Serve as a key member of the Employee Benefits leadership team, contributing to enterprise strategy and long‑term planning.

Partner closely with:

Distribution leaders on sales strategies and broker/aggregator engagement

Product & Actuarial on pricing and portfolio management

Claims on risk‑experience feedback loops

Technology on modernization and automation initiatives

7. Portfolio, Performance, & Risk Management

Own underwriting profitability goals and portfolio analytics.

Monitor trends, mix of business, loss ratios, rate actions, and underwriting leakage.

Ensure reserve adequacy and collaborate with Actuarial during annual planning cycles.

Qualifications

15+ years of Employee Benefits underwriting experience with deep knowledge of small‑group and mid‑market segments.

Direct experience underwriting Dental, Vision, Life, STD, LTD, Paid Leaves, and Supplemental Health.

Proven leadership of underwriting teams; VP‑level or equivalent experience preferred.

Demonstrated ability to underwrite and negotiate large aggregators: PEOs, payroll providers, GAs, and national brokers.

Strong process‑engineering mindset with experience building underwriting operations from ground up.

Experience implementing technology modernization, automation, and AI‑enabled decisioning.

Highly collaborative, entrepreneurial, tech‑forward mindset.

Excellent communication skills and comfort presenting at the executive level.