Manager, Personal Lines Underwriting

Located in Ontario and Nova Scotia, Heartland Mutual Insurance strives to be the Best Mutual. Our team of talented and dedicated professionals challenge the norm and strive to be extraordinary. It’s all about fulfilling our promise with a personal approach. With our team, you’ll bring this purpose to life every day by living our values, being open to change, and pursuing your career aspirations.

What you will do
As Manager of Personal Lines Underwriting you will take on a leadership role by providing support, guidance, and mentoring to team members while helping develop and execute business unit priorities. The Personal Lines Manager ensures the department is operating at maximum efficiency, productivity, and profitability to achieve corporate goals, objectives and service levels. The Personal Lines Manager has remarkable communication skills and is excellent at establishing and maintaining relationships with key partners.

Underwriting Portfolio Management
- Lead and manage assigned portfolio on an ongoing basis, to support the achievement of Heartland financial goals in accordance with the operational plan.
- Work within defined limits of authority, consistently provide high quality underwriting decisions that support the achievement of Heartland financial targets in accordance with the operational plan.
- Develop and maintain an underwriting infrastructure that consistently delivers results in accordance with the operational plan.
- Develop and maintain a high-performance underwriting culture based on decision-making initiatives and accountability.
- Ensure corporate reinsurance requirements are met.
- Improve efficiencies through continual re-evaluation and improvement of workflows and best practices.
- Enable team members to achieve consistent and quality underwriting decisions while minimizing errors.
- Continually re-evaluate underwriter authority levels and broker binding authority to ensure decision-making is made at the frontlines.
- Complete regular analysis of new business and cancellation logs to monitor trends and flow of the portfolio. Prepare reports for the VP and develop action plans as needed.
- Coordinate and provide direction as needed for all broker/agent rehabilitations.
- Develop and continually re-evaluate underwriting guidelines to align with Heartland’s financial goals.
- Handle complex underwriting referrals.
- Provide market intelligence and conduct research into current trends and emerging issues.
- Provide ongoing underwriting guidance to support and reinforce Heartland’s core underwriting appetite.
- Delegate and monitor underwriting authority appropriately within department to ensure that decision making is effectively applied.
- Coordinate and provide training and development initiatives to consistently enhance the quality of decision making.

Product and Pricing Management
- Participate in product & pricing development initiatives to keep Heartland competitive in the Canadian P&C marketplace while in accordance with the corporate strategic plan.
- Develop and continually re-evaluate underwriting appetite for specific line of business with VP and CEO, and brokers/agents.
- Develop and continually re-evaluate Heartland’s “target market” for specific line of business to align with Heartland’s financial goals.
- Ensure that Heartland market strategies are well understood by front-line underwriting staff and that those strategies are effectively implemented on a day-to-day basis.
- Use underwriting knowledge to make recommendations for rate structure/pricing changes and underwriting or claims improvement

Other Responsibilities
- Support the VP and senior leadership team on special projects, requiring advanced technical skills and knowledge as needed.
- Collaborate with the leadership team on the development and prioritization of strategic initiatives.
- Maintain working knowledge of all information systems/programs with underwriting and analyze/recommend improvements to work processes and procedures.
- Act as the lead person on all special projects and initiatives as may be required.
- Support new technology initiatives.
- Responsible for performance management including new hires, promotions and disciplinary actions up to and including terminations.
- Fully understands the common terms, conditions and exclusions of policy coverage’s and can recognize gaps in coverage, or exposure to loss
- Understands the political, legal and social influences on underwriting own product line, and ensures compliance with established principles.

What you will bring
- 10+ years of underwriting experience
- Post-secondary education, CIP designation is an asset
- Exemplary analytical skills and can make informed decisions.
- Ability to influence decisions and negotiate strategically.
- Enthusiasm for learning who thrives within a team or independently.
- Effective communication and interpersonal skills, both written and verbal.
- Proven decision-making and analytical skills

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