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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Underwriting Quality Technician

💰 $55,000 - $85,000

UnderwritingQuality AssuranceOperationsCompliance

🎯 Role Definition

The Underwriting Quality Technician is a quality assurance and operations-focused role that performs systematic reviews of underwriting files, measures compliance to policy and regulatory standards, documents findings, and partners with underwriting leadership to drive corrective actions and continuous process improvement. This position combines strong technical knowledge of underwriting rules and systems with an analytical mindset, excellent attention to detail, and the ability to communicate findings and remediation plans to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Underwriting Technician or Junior Underwriter
  • Loan Processor or Policy Administration Associate
  • Quality Assurance Analyst or Audit Assistant

Advancement To:

  • Senior Underwriting Quality Analyst / Auditor
  • Underwriting Quality Supervisor or Team Lead
  • Underwriting Quality Manager / Compliance Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • Operations Analyst (Lending or Insurance Operations)
  • Risk Analyst or Regulatory Compliance Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Conduct comprehensive file reviews of underwriting cases to verify that decisions, pricing and documentation comply with company underwriting guidelines, investor overlays and regulatory requirements; document findings in the audit management system with clear, actionable comments.
  • Perform statistically sound sample selection and routine QA sampling across assigned book-of-business to ensure coverage of loan/policy types, channels, and risk tiers while maintaining audit integrity and traceability.
  • Score and grade underwriting files using established quality scoring frameworks and communicate scores and root causes to underwriters and managers to drive measurable quality improvements.
  • Identify, classify and document underwriting defects, policy exceptions and compliance breaches; prepare detailed defect narratives that include impact, frequency and recommended corrective actions.
  • Monitor and report on underwriting quality KPIs (defect rate, accuracy rate, turnaround time, rework rate) by channel, product, and individual underwriter; deliver weekly and monthly dashboards to stakeholders.
  • Execute targeted re-reviews and remediation plans for loans/policies flagged with high-risk findings or regulatory relevance; validate remediation outcomes and maintain audit trail of corrective actions.
  • Lead root cause analysis (RCA) exercises for recurring quality issues, synthesizing data from audits, system logs and stakeholder interviews to identify process, training or systems gaps.
  • Collaborate with underwriting trainers and managers to design and deliver focused coaching, policy refreshers and corrective action plans that reduce repeat defects and improve adherence to guidelines.
  • Draft and maintain QA procedures, audit playbooks and file review checklists to ensure consistency and compliance with evolving product and regulatory requirements.
  • Partner with underwriting operations, training, compliance and IT to implement process changes, system enhancements and quality controls that eliminate common errors and streamline file handling.
  • Validate system configurations, decision rules and automated checks in the underwriting platform following system updates or policy changes to ensure ongoing accuracy of automated underwriting outputs.
  • Escalate significant compliance issues, high-severity exceptions or systemic process failures to compliance and senior leadership in accordance with escalation protocols.
  • Prepare executive summaries and trend reports for leadership that highlight quality performance, risk exposure, and recommended strategic initiatives to improve underwriting outcomes.
  • Support pre-launch quality reviews for new products, program changes or channel rollouts by developing targeted audit scenarios and acceptance criteria to ensure risk controls are effective prior to full implementation.
  • Maintain up-to-date knowledge of federal, state and investor-specific regulatory requirements (e.g., fair lending, disclosure, investor overlays) and incorporate regulatory considerations into QA assessments.
  • Enter, maintain and reconcile audit data in quality management systems or spreadsheets; ensure accuracy of metadata and audit coding for downstream analytics.
  • Coordinate cross-functional working groups to address persistent quality gaps, track remediation milestones and validate completion of corrective actions.
  • Provide second-level review and sign-off on critical or borderline underwriting decisions as defined by the QA policy, supporting timely throughput while ensuring quality thresholds are met.
  • Participate in calibration sessions with underwriting leadership to align scoring, grading and interpretation of policy requirements across reviewers and business units.
  • Drive continuous improvement initiatives by analyzing audit data to identify automation opportunities, policy clarifications, or training priorities that will measurably reduce defect rates.
  • Support external and internal audit requests by providing documentation, sample populations, and evidence of remediation activities related to underwriting quality.
  • Act as a subject matter expert for underwriting quality processes during vendor or channel audits and contribute to corrective action plans when vendor performance impacts underwriting quality.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc management and regulatory data requests by extracting and validating underwriting quality data; prepare charts and narrative summaries for stakeholder distribution.
  • Assist in QA system configuration testing, including user acceptance testing (UAT) for enhancements to the audit management system, underwriting platform or analytics tools.
  • Contribute to the organization's quality strategy by proposing metrics, sampling methodologies and control frameworks that align with business objectives and regulatory expectations.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate quality findings into operational requirements and prioritized fixes for underwriting systems and workflows.
  • Participate in agile ceremonies or project planning meetings for cross-functional initiatives that impact underwriting processes, quality controls or data integrity.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep knowledge of underwriting guidelines, policy interpretation and decision documentation for mortgage or insurance products.
  • File review and audit experience, including sampling methodologies and QA scoring frameworks.
  • Strong working knowledge of regulatory compliance requirements relevant to underwriting (e.g., fair lending, licensing, disclosure, investor overlays).
  • Proficiency with underwriting and loan/policy origination systems (examples: Encompass, Loan Origination Systems, policy administration platforms) and the ability to validate system outputs.
  • Advanced Excel skills: pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, conditional formatting, and data cleaning techniques for dashboarding and trend analysis.
  • Experience with audit management and quality tracking tools or databases (e.g., QA platforms, SharePoint lists, internal audit systems).
  • Ability to produce and interpret KPI dashboards using BI tools (Power BI, Tableau) or Excel-based reporting.
  • Root cause analysis techniques and corrective action planning experience.
  • Strong technical writing skills for clear audit narratives, policy documentation and executive reporting.
  • Familiarity with basic data queries or SQL for extracting and validating quality populations and metrics.

Soft Skills

  • High attention to detail and consistent accuracy when reviewing complex documents and data.
  • Strong analytical and critical thinking skills to identify patterns, trends and underlying causes.
  • Effective verbal and written communication; able to translate technical QA findings into clear business recommendations.
  • Collaboration and stakeholder management skills; comfortable working with underwriters, operations, compliance and IT.
  • Time management and prioritization skills in a fast-paced, high-volume environment.
  • Coaching mindset: ability to provide constructive feedback and support training efforts to improve team performance.
  • Adaptability to changing policies, regulatory updates and product changes.
  • Professional judgement and the ability to escalate appropriately when encountering high-severity issues.
  • Integrity and confidentiality when handling sensitive borrower, client or policy data.
  • Process-oriented mindset with a bias for continuous improvement and operational excellence.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • High school diploma or GED with relevant underwriting/operations experience; or
  • Associate degree in a business-related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Finance, Business Administration, Risk Management, Accounting, Economics, or related discipline.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Finance
  • Business Administration
  • Risk Management
  • Economics
  • Accounting

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 1–5 years of experience in underwriting operations, quality assurance, loan/policy processing, or related auditing roles.

Preferred:

  • 2–5+ years of experience specifically performing underwriting file reviews, quality audits or compliance testing within mortgage, insurance or lending environments.
  • Prior exposure to investor guideline audits, regulatory exam support, or enterprise QA programs is highly desirable.
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