Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Underwriting Quality Manager

🎯 Role Definition

The Underwriting Quality Manager is responsible for overseeing underwriting standards, quality assurance processes, and risk governance across insurance portfolios. This role ensures underwriting decisions are consistent, compliant, and aligned with company risk appetite, regulatory requirements, and strategic objectives. The position partners closely with underwriting, actuarial, compliance, and operations teams to drive underwriting excellence and continuous improvement.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Underwriter with demonstrated coaching or QA responsibilities
Underwriting Quality Analyst / Underwriting Auditor
Underwriting Operations Supervisor

Advancement To:

Director of Underwriting Quality or Director of Underwriting Operations
Head of Underwriting / Chief Underwriter
VP, Operations or VP, Underwriting Excellence

Lateral Moves:

Underwriting Process Improvement Manager
Claims Quality or Compliance Manager
Product Underwriting Policy Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Develop, implement, and maintain a robust underwriting quality assurance (QA) and audit program, including sampling methodologies, audit scopes, scorecards, and escalation protocols to ensure consistent adherence to underwriting guidelines and risk appetite.
Design and execute periodic and targeted underwriting audits across personal, commercial, and specialty lines, performing detailed file reviews to assess guideline compliance, risk selection accuracy, pricing appropriateness, and documentation completeness.
Establish, track, and report on underwriting KPIs and SLAs (e.g., hit rates, deviation rates, turnaround times, error rates), delivering monthly and quarterly dashboards and executive-level trends to senior leadership with actionable recommendations.
Lead quantitative root-cause analysis for underwriting exceptions and quality events, identifying systemic issues, recommending corrective action plans, and monitoring remediation effectiveness until sustained improvement is demonstrated.
Own the underwriting quality scorecard, defining scoring criteria, calibrating reviewer alignment exercises, and managing inter-rater reliability to ensure consistent assessment across reviewers and business units.
Manage, coach, and develop a high-performing team of underwriters, QA specialists, and auditors including recruitment, performance management, training plans, and succession planning to build long-term capability.
Partner with underwriting leadership and product teams to translate audit findings into policy clarifications, guideline updates, underwriting rule changes, or targeted training to strengthen underwriter decisioning.
Build and maintain relationships with actuarial, pricing, claims, legal, compliance, and IT to drive cross-functional initiatives that reduce risk exposure and align underwriting quality with overall business objectives.
Create and deliver targeted training, calibration sessions, and knowledge transfer programs for underwriters and brokers based on audit results and emerging risk trends to close capability gaps.
Define and enforce governance around underwriting exceptions, referral thresholds, and delegated authority by maintaining clear escalation paths, approval matrices, and documentation requirements.
Oversee automated quality controls and system-based business rules within underwriting platforms (e.g., Guidewire, Duck Creek, Salesforce), partnering with IT to implement, test, and validate rule changes and workflow enhancements.
Conduct trend analysis using transactional data and audit results to detect emerging risk patterns, concentration issues, product leakages, and rating or form inconsistencies, and report findings to product and risk committees.
Manage vendor or third-party auditing relationships (e.g., TPAs, external audit providers), including SOW development, performance monitoring, deliverable review, and integration of third-party findings into internal remediation plans.
Serve as a subject matter expert for regulatory examinations and internal compliance reviews related to underwriting practices, responding to requests for documentation, test plans, and remediation status updates.
Implement continuous improvement methodologies (Lean, Six Sigma) to streamline underwriting workflows, reduce cycle times, eliminate non-value-added steps, and standardize best practices across regions and distribution channels.
Lead pilot projects and cross-functional workstreams to test new underwriting tools (decisioning engines, AI-assisted risk scoring), ensuring governance, quality controls, and rollback plans are in place before full deployment.
Maintain a comprehensive risk register for underwriting quality issues, assessing potential business impact, likelihood, mitigation options, owners, and deadlines, and present updates to senior risk stakeholders.
Drive passporting and delegation audits for delegated authority partners and broker-managed portfolios to ensure delegated underwriting remains within acceptable risk parameters and contractual obligations.
Coordinate file re-reviews and appeals processes for disputed underwriting decisions, ensuring transparent workflows, fair adjudication, and incorporation of lessons learned into training and guidelines.
Prepare and present clear, data-driven summaries of audit findings, recommendations, and remediation progress to executive leadership, board committees, and underwriting governance forums.
Monitor compliance with internal policies and external regulatory requirements (state insurance laws, solvency, disclosures), ensuring underwriting documentation and processes meet legal and audit standards.
Prioritize resource allocation and budget for the underwriting quality function, balancing ongoing monitoring, special investigations, system projects, and capability-building initiatives to maximize ROI.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory analysis from underwriting, actuarial, and risk teams to inform product decisions, pricing reviews, and audit planning.
Contribute to the underwriting quality strategy and roadmap, aligning QA priorities with enterprise risk appetite, growth objectives, and digital transformation initiatives.
Collaborate with business units and IT to translate quality assurance requirements into system enhancements, reporting requirements, and automated controls.
Participate in project planning, sprint planning, and agile ceremonies when delivering system implementations or underwriting technology upgrades.
Represent the underwriting quality function in product launches and rate filings to ensure forward-looking controls and monitoring are embedded at go-live.
Maintain up-to-date documentation of QA methodologies, audit procedures, and calibration results for internal audit, compliance, and external regulator access.
Provide subject-matter support during regulatory exams, internal audits, and special investigations; prepare evidence, management responses, and remediation timelines.
Facilitate periodic quality forums and lessons-learned workshops to propagate best practices and control enhancements across regional underwriting teams.
Assist in developing data pipelines and reporting logic to ensure audit sampling frames and quality metrics are accurate, reproducible, and auditable.
Support organizational change management efforts to ensure new underwriting policies and system changes are adopted consistently and sustainably.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Deep understanding of underwriting principles across personal lines, commercial lines, and specialty products, including risk selection, pricing drivers, and policy terms.
Proven expertise in designing and maintaining underwriting quality assurance and audit programs, including sampling methodologies, scorecards, and calibration techniques.
Strong data analysis skills: advanced Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP/INDEX-MATCH), SQL for querying underwriting data, and experience with BI tools (Power BI, Tableau) to build dashboards and executive reports.
Experience with underwriting and policy administration systems (e.g., Guidewire, Duck Creek, Insurity) and working knowledge of integrating QA controls into these platforms.
Familiarity with statistical sampling techniques, hypothesis testing, and basic predictive analytics to identify trends and quantify risk improvements.
Knowledge of regulatory compliance frameworks relevant to insurance underwriting (state insurance regulations, solvency, privacy) and experience supporting regulatory examinations.
Practical application of process improvement methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, or Kaizen to reduce defects and improve underwriting throughput.
Experience with governance, control frameworks, and developing remediation plans with measurable outcomes and timelines.
Ability to create and maintain audit documentation that meets internal audit and external regulatory expectations, including evidence trails and test plans.
Comfort working with large datasets, data validation, and reconciling system outputs to ensure data integrity for audit purposes.
Experience managing vendor/TPA audits and integrating third-party findings into an enterprise remediation program.

Soft Skills

Strong leadership and people management with a history of developing underwriters and QA professionals.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills for presenting complex audit findings to non-technical stakeholders and executives.
High attention to detail balanced with the ability to synthesize insights at a strategic level.
Influencing and stakeholder management skills to secure buy-in for corrective actions and process changes across the organization.
Coaching and facilitation skills to run calibration sessions, training workshops, and cross-functional working groups.
Analytical mindset and problem-solving aptitude to convert data into actionable controls and business improvements.
Resilience and adaptability in a changing regulatory or business environment; comfort managing competing priorities and tight deadlines.
Ethical judgement and integrity in handling confidential underwriting and customer information.
Project management skills to lead cross-functional implementations and track remediation milestones.
Customer and broker-focused orientation to translate quality improvements into better distribution outcomes and partner relationships.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Risk Management, Actuarial Science, Insurance, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree in Business Administration, Risk Management, or a related discipline or professional certifications such as CPCU, ARM, ARe, ACII, or Lean Six Sigma (Green/Black Belt).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Insurance / Risk Management
Finance / Accounting
Business Administration / Management
Data Analytics / Statistics
Actuarial Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

5–10+ years in insurance underwriting with demonstrated experience in underwriting quality assurance, audit, or operations.

Preferred:

8+ years of underwriting experience with 3+ years in a QA, audit, or supervisory/managerial role. Prior experience leading audit programs, implementing underwriting controls, and working with underwriting systems and BI tooling is strongly preferred. Industry experience in P&C, commercial lines, or specialty insurance lines and exposure to regulatory exam processes is highly desirable.