Underwriting Strategy and Capabilities Director

USAA•San Antonio, VA

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

USAA is seeking a dedicated UW Strategy and Capabilities Director to join their Underwriting Strategy and Capabilities team, which serves as the engine room for technological change in personal lines of business. This role involves leading tech-savvy teams to design modular, cross-product solutions, managing the execution flow and multimillion dollar IT budget of the portfolio, and architecting long-term strategic roadmaps to reinvent underwriting through modern technology. The ideal candidate will be a self-directed, analytically minded business subject matter expert who can bridge the gap between underwriting problems and complex systems engineering to deliver unprecedented speed, precision, and market responsiveness. The position requires developing new products and overseeing their launch and maturation into target strategic markets, acting as a cross-functional expert for product development, compliance, operational improvements, claims management, vendor management, product documentation, fulfillment, and system releases. The role focuses on developing digital-first products, leading the launch of innovative offerings and enhanced features, maintaining knowledge of business and underwriting performance, and conducting post-launch monitoring and maintenance. This includes developing recommendations for new products, evaluating buy/build/ally decisions, generating creative product and coverage solutions, and conducting complex analysis of internal and external data to support product strategy and competitive intelligence. The role also involves developing the new product value proposition, ensuring sales support for all distribution channels, leading the analysis of new product performance metrics, and coordinating with control partners (Legal, Compliance, Risk Management) to ensure compliance with laws and regulations. Ensuring risks are effectively identified, measured, monitored, and controlled is also a key responsibility.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Supply Chain, or Statistics; OR 4 years of relevant education and/or experience.
8 years relevant experience in Actuary, Underwriting, Marketing, Operations, Financial Services or relevant military experience.
Extensive experience in developing, deploying and supporting product and/or integrated suite of products.
Experience working through agile product development process, managing multiple products simultaneously.
Knowledge and application of Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC).
Creative problem solver with hands on experience in problem framing, qualitative & quantitative research, running product experiments, hypothesis testing and prototyping to launch products at the intersection of Human, Technology and Business dimensions.
Navigates through ambiguous contexts with confidence.
Ability to break large complex initiatives into smaller manageable features and capabilities and deliver them early and often.

Nice To Haves

Proven experience building multi-year capability roadmaps focused on the creation and maturation of sophisticated, inter-dependent capabilities; preferably the deployment of predictive underwriting tools and advanced automated decisioning.
Mastery in creating complex Business Capability Assessments (BCAs) that justify tech investments by linking AI/model execution to P&L impacts and loss-ratio improvements.
High-level executive communication skills, with the ability to turn ambiguous data, tech specs, and underwriting goals into clean, compelling strategic narratives for senior leadership.
Experience acting as the strategic underwriting liaison to field product management, product development, and digital distribution solutions.
Proven ability to build understanding and advocacy amongst stakeholders around directional capability objectives; experience connecting the dots between capability development roadmaps and business unit or corporate strategic objectives.
Proven ability to inform and create milestones in capability development and inform measures of capability maturation.
Experience synthesizing information around current state, market & competitive insight and corporate & business unit objectives into a clear future-looking roadmap and articulate how roadmap actions move the needle on objectives.
US military experience through military service or a military spouse/domestic partner.

Responsibilities

Accountable for developing new products and overseeing and managing the launch and maturation of new products into target strategic markets.
Act as a cross functional expert as this position provides expertise and support for product line initiatives related to product development, compliance, operational and process improvements, claims management, vendor management, product documentation, fulfillment, and/or system releases.
Responsible for development of digital first products supporting the needs and risks of USAA Members.
Leads development and launch of new innovative product offerings as well as auxiliary/enhanced features/services for existing products.
Responsible for maintaining thorough level of knowledge of business and underwriting performance for products in scope (e.g.trends, results, etc.).
Responsible for post-launch monitoring, maintenance and underwriting of 'new in market' products based on product performance, member needs and competitive changes in the market including but not limited to product rules, rates, and forms.
Develops recommendations to launch new products and the evaluation and decision to buy/build or ally for individual product(s).
Generates creative product and coverage solutions for member needs to ensure a dynamic product development pipeline exists.
Conducts complex analysis of internal and external data and member information to support formulation of product strategy and enhance competitive intelligence.
Develops and communicates the new product value proposition for individual products.
Ensures sales support is delivered to all distribution channels (e.g., com, mobile, contact center) so that the new product is properly positioned to members.
Leads the analysis and evaluation of new product performance metrics to make changes to offerings, if necessary, prior to full launch.
Coordinates with relevant control partners (to include Legal, Compliance, and Risk Management) to ensure product offerings are designed and implemented in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.
Ensures risks associated with business activities are effectively identified, measured, monitored, and controlled in accordance with risk and compliance policies and procedures.