Business Consultant - Underwriting Best Practices, Employee Benefits

The Hartford•Hartford, CT

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a Business Consultant for our Employee Benefits Underwriting Best Practice Team. This role is crucial in building a best-in-class underwriting organization by championing disciplined risk management and empowering confident decision-making through clear, compliant, and actionable processes. The consultant will build relationships and collaborate with cross-functional business partners at various levels to execute, manage, and communicate procedural changes. This role is essential in establishing and maintaining the processes, systems, and tool guidance that our underwriters use daily.

Requirements

2+ years of experience with Employee Benefits Products and Business Areas; Employee Benefits Underwriting experience strongly preferred.
Ability to leverage and influence cross functional networks to acquire and consolidate information from various sources.
Ability to critically analyze data, problem solve, make judgments as to reliability/accuracy of information received.
Must be detail oriented; able to challenge existing norms using logic.
Ability to work independently to drive results.
Ability to multi-task while demonstrating the ability to prioritize and manage time effectively.
Excellent organizational skills.
Strong technical writing skills.
Demonstrated written communication skills.
Strong team building and interpersonal skills.
Strong working knowledge of Microsoft office and SharePoint.

Responsibilities

Integration of underwriting processes with system and pricing tool enhancements.
Timely communication of product, process, pricing tool, system, and compliance changes that impact underwriting.
Ensuring accuracy in underwriting guidelines.
Improving efficiency in underwriting operations.
Promoting consistency in underwriting practices.
Review pricing tool and system enhancements based on scheduled cadence.
Participate in scheduled Prioritization Meetings and Sprint Reviews and actively engage with technical teams to understand system enhancement specifications.
Identify impact to user guides and guidelines and create and/or update processes accordingly.
Provide UAT testing support, as needed to understand changes.
Communicate changes to impacted audience.
Identify areas for process improvement within underwriting workflows and implement solutions to increase accuracy and speed.
Advocate for Voice of Customer (VOC) at the center of all process changes.
Lead and/or support projects and initiatives across EB Underwriting as assigned.
Assess the impacts of projects to drive underwriting efficiency and improvement.
Leverage internal business relationships to assess end-to-end business impacts and acquire necessary information to develop and/or update best practices for new products, processes, pricing tool, system, and compliance changes.
Create and publish regularly scheduled and unscheduled communications for customers; ensure information is articulated clearly, concisely, and accurately and is linked to appropriate guideline content for ongoing reference.
Facilitate problem-solving and collaboration between underwriting and other departments.
Employ continuous process improvement mindset with a focus on understanding and streamlining existing end-to-end workflows across business functions.
Understand how to leverage The Hartford Way and RAPID model for process design.
Effectively present comprehensive and concise process recommendations to senior Underwriting leadership, as needed, and utilize negotiating and influencing skills to gain agreement.
Improve the ease of use and consistency of underwriting guidelines across segments and lines of business.
Ensure underwriting guidelines and key controls are compliant with state regulations to enable profitable growth.
Conduct audits and collaborate with teammates to manage the currency of existing Underwriting guideline content by identifying and working with appropriate stakeholders for decisions and updating all associated web content following annual maintenance plan.
Coordinate closely with business leaders, training, quality resources, and subject matter experts to resolve procedural overlap and inconsistencies.
Create, manage, and update UW Best Practice team artifacts, including guiding principles and standard ways-of-working, to drive team consistency and to ensure deliverables meet the needs of our customers.