Director of Underwriting, Agriculture

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Join us and play your part in something special!

The Director of Underwriting is responsible for managing a diverse portfolio of agribusiness, including farm, commercial equine liability, and equine mortality books of business. This role focuses on achieving premium goals, driving overall profitability, and managing accommodations within desired levels. The position involves coordinating program-level profitability reviews with claims, actuarial, and sales teams, and serving as the primary underwriting contact for these products. The Director also participates in evaluating pricing guidelines, providing market insights, and formulating underwriting guidelines. This role works closely with actuarial, compliance, regulatory services, product line leadership, and executive underwriting leaders to develop pricing plans and product strategies. The role includes leading the underwriting team in executing underwriting guidelines effectively, ensuring resource alignment to achieve or exceed loss and expense performance targets.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop annual operating plans to support divisional business objectives, including premium production and expense budgets.
• Achieve goals for premium targets, renewal retention rates, pricing levels, loss ratio performance, team productivity, and program revenue targets.
• Analyze individual risks and book of business results to manage and control underwriting exposure and pricing strategy consistent with company objectives.
• Act as a liaison between underwriting team members and other company functions such as Claims, IT, Sales, and Actuarial to increase premium production and profitability.
• Ensure guidelines, structures, and processes are in place to lead a team of managers and individual contributors in executing the book of business profitably.
• Identify future growth areas for the books of business and lead execution to capitalize on these opportunities.
• Direct and monitor the underwriting team in risk selection and pricing according to company guidelines to meet target profitability contributions.
• Provide ongoing underwriting training and development of new and existing staff by identifying both emerging risks and growth opportunities and delivering educational content.
• Conduct annual reviews and engage direct reports in developmental and skill-building opportunities.
• Collaborate with distribution partners to ensure the health and retention of relationships, develop new production sources, and strengthen new business pipelines.
• Incorporate knowledge of company products and services and external market knowledge into service development offerings and value-based solutions.
• Partner with existing agents to understand their businesses, goals, strategies, and challenges, and formulate business plans to deliver effective products and services.
• Establish, monitor, improve, and maintain competitive service standards for handling new submissions, renewals, and endorsement requests.
• Leverage key metrics and reports to lead the team in continuous improvements and make recommendations to leadership on program performance.
• Serve as a technical risk expert, providing guidance on risk evaluation and pricing, maintaining underwriting authorities, and stepping in as a line underwriter when necessary.
• Develop, train, and mentor the underwriting team, ensuring technical, service, and regulatory knowledge is up-to-date and compliant with state and industry standards.
• Optimize organizational structure to deliver on P&L goals and future growth.
• Utilize strong analytical skills to interpret business information and make sound decisions regarding the quality of business at various levels.
• Ensure informational needs of the programs are met, necessary dashboards are in place, product/rate filings are prioritized, claim trends are monitored, and pricing levels are appropriate.
• Periodically travel, representing Markel at various broker and industry conferences and events.
  
  

Job Requirements

• Successful candidates will have 10 years of insurance industry experience underwriting, as well as a proven background in leading and mentoring underwriters. Strong technical, business development, computer, and communication skills are a must.
• Candidates with agribusiness or horse and farm industry experience is preferred but not required.
• Bachelor's degree required, preferably in a business-related field.
• Strong understanding of expense management approaches and success in utilizing metrics to lead high-performing teams and external partners.
• Solid understanding of overall and state-specific requirements related to relevant product areas.
• Proven ability in strategy development around appropriate portfolio balance based on risk characteristics, with the ability to monitor and refine structures.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with an ability to drive data analytics and make appropriate conclusions on results.
• Ability to manage multiple projects and timelines across a variety of stakeholders to meet targets and deliverable dates.
• Experience in identifying, evaluating, selecting, partnering with, and managing external agents.
• Foundation in leveraging data to conduct meaningful analysis of books of business and familiarity with best practices in analytics around loss control.
• Highly organized with the ability to work in a fast-paced, energetic environment.
• Exceptional written and verbal skills, including experience interacting with and providing updates to senior leadership and executive teams.
• Related industry designations preferred (e.g., CPCU, AU-M, AFIS).
  
  

US Work Authorization

• US Work Authorization required. Markel does not provide visa sponsorship for this position, now or in the future.
  
  

Who We Are

Markel Group (NYSE – MKL) a fortune 500 company with over 60 offices in 20 countries, is a holding company for insurance, reinsurance, specialist advisory and investment operations around the world.

We’re all about people | We win together | We strive for better

We enjoy the everyday | We think further

What’s In It For You

In keeping with the values of the Markel Style, we strive to support our employees in living their lives to the fullest at home and at work. 

• We offer competitive benefit programs that help meet our diverse and changing environment as well as support our employees’ needs at all stages of life. 
• All full-time employees have the option to select from multiple health, dental and vision insurance plan options and optional life, disability, and AD&D insurance. 
• We also offer a 401(k) with employer match contributions, an Employee Stock Purchase Plan, PTO, corporate holidays and floating holidays, parental leave.  
• Markel offers hybrid working schedules of 3 days in the office and 2 days remote.  
  
  

Are you ready to play your part?

Choose ‘Apply Now’ to fill out our short application, so that we can find out more about you.

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• All legitimate job postings with Markel will be posted on Markel Careers. No other URL should be trusted for job postings.
• All legitimate communications with Markel recruiters will come from Markel.com email addresses.
  
  

We would also ask that you please report any job employment scams related to Markel to rarecruiting@markel.com.

Markel is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate or allow discrimination on the basis of any protected characteristic. This includes race; color; sex; religion; creed; national origin or place of birth; ancestry; age; disability; affectional or sexual orientation; gender expression or identity; genetic information, sickle cell trait, or atypical hereditary cellular or blood trait; refusal to submit to genetic tests or make genetic test results available; medical condition; citizenship status; pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; marital status, civil union status, domestic partnership status, familial status, or family responsibilities; military or veteran status, including unfavorable discharge from military service; personal appearance, height, or weight; matriculation or political affiliation; expunged juvenile records; arrest and court records where prohibited by applicable law; status as a victim of domestic or sexual violence; public assistance status; order of protection status; status as a smoker or nonsmoker; membership or activity in local commissions; the use or nonuse of lawful products off employer premises during non-work hours; declining to attend meetings or participate in communications about religious or political matters; or any other classification protected by applicable law. 

 

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