Regional Underwriting Leader

The Mutual Group • Iowa - TMG Home Office, IL

9d • $117,000 - $214,500 • Hybrid

About The Position

As the Regional Underwriting Leader, you will be responsible for leading profitable growth and sustained market expansion across the region. This role drives underwriting excellence through disciplined risk selection, pricing integrity, and proactive portfolio management while ensuring strong adherence to regulatory and internal compliance standards. Accountable for achieving underwriting performance goals, financial targets, advancing territory development, strengthens agency partnerships, and identifies new business opportunities aligned with strategic objectives. A consistent focus on service excellence ensures timely, responsive, and value-driven support for agents and policyholders. Success is further enabled through strong cross-functional collaboration with Sales, Product, Risk Control, Operations, and Compliance to deliver a seamless customer experience. Equally important, the role cultivates high-performing teams by investing in talent development, fostering a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and building future leaders to support long-term organizational success.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business Administration, Insurance, Risk Management, or related field.
• 7+ years of underwriting experience or related functional area.
• 2+ years leadership or supervisory experience preferred.
• Demonstrated profitable portfolio management experience.
• Strong analytical and decision-making capabilities.
• Proficiency in underwriting systems and data analysis tools.
• Deep understanding of underwriting principles, compliance, and industry standards.
• CPCU, AU, ARM designations preferred.
• High attention to detail and strong organizational ability.
• Ability to operate effectively under pressure and make timely decisions.
• Leadership and team-building skills.
• Strong coaching and talent development ability.
• Excellent communication, cross-functional collaboration and interpersonal skills.
• Change management orientation.
• Strategic, problem-solving mindset.

Nice To Haves

• CPCU, AU, ARM designations preferred.

Responsibilities

• Attract, select, retain, lead, and develop a team of underwriters.
• Establish clear performance expectations, conduct evaluations, and coach team.
• Provide performance coaching and technical mentorship to underwriters through routine coaching, referral review, and audit feedback, helping team members improve underwriting judgement, workflow efficiency, and decision quality.
• Provide performance coaching on underwriting workflow and decision processes to ensure Underwriters and Underwriting Assistants work in the most efficient and effective way, reducing duplication of effort and improving speed-to-decision while maintaining underwriting quality.
• Ensure Underwriting Assistants are effectively supported in the underwriting process either directly or through assigned underwriters, including coaching on underwriting workflow, documentation practices, and file preparation to improve overall team productivity.
• Partner with Operations Manager to identify and develop Underwriting Assistant talent capable of developing into underwriting roles.
• Allocate underwriting authority and workload across the team.
• Review and elevate complex or out-of-appetite risks to VP as required.
• Ensure referral documentation captures Underwriting thought process and meets governance standards.
• Ensure effective risk assessment, selection, pricing, and coverage decisions.
• Align teams around segment strategy to drive production and underwriting activities.
• Own portfolio management, profitability, and growth for assigned territory.
• Develop and execute territory business plans aligned with corporate and segment objectives.
• Analyze portfolio health (loss ratio, retention, rate adequacy, growth mix, exposure trends) and initiate corrective actions where necessary.
• Manage strategic relationships with key agency partners, collaborate with Distribution in activities, mentor underwriters and develop their relationship management and sales skills.
• Establish feedback loops with Distribution and agency partners, using insights to drive improvements in underwriting service levels, decision speed, and commercial effectiveness, and track measurable improvements in agent satisfaction and service performance.
• Develop market intelligence and competitive insights, share with peers and leadership for use to inform strategies.
• Responsible for the territory’s underwriting quality and related metrics.
• Monitor and implement corrective action plans based on observations, business results, and quality reviews.
• Partner with quality function to continuously improve underwriting quality.
• Ensure underwriting practices adhere to internal standards, authority, and external regulations.
• Ensure team effectively captures underwriting thought processes in documentation, including rationale when deviating from guidelines.
• Conduct review of team files as outlined in goals and provide coaching and feedback to ensure effective and consistent execution.
• Work with Sales, Actuarial, Operations Manager, Enterprise Operations, Claims, Finance, and Product teams to align underwriting strategies and activities with business objectives.
• Utilizing dashboards and analytical support teams, monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), identify trends, decide actions to improve results, and report out regularly to senior leadership.
• Monitor and manage service level agreements (SLA) for new business and renewal workflows.
• Monitor agent service feedback and operational metrics to identify improvement opportunities and implement actions that enhance agent experience and underwriting efficiency.
• Partner with Operations Manager to optimize team workflows to enhance service and agent experience, reduce expense, and improve speed-to-decision.
• Recommend process improvements based on data analysis.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary plus incentive plans for eligible team members
• 401(K) retirement plan that includes a company match of up to 6% of your eligible salary
• Free basic life and AD&D, long-term disability and short-term disability insurance
• Medical, dental and vision plans to meet your unique healthcare needs
• Wellness incentives
• Generous time off program that includes personal, holiday and volunteer paid time off
• Flexible work schedules and hybrid/remote options for eligible positions
• Educational assistance

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager