Small Business Underwriting Zone Leader

Small Business Underwriting Leader-Central Zone

Founded in 1848, Westfield is a global leader in property and casualty insurance, delivering superior risk insights and innovative solutions to customers through a diverse portfolio of insurance products. Westfield underwrites commercial, personal, surety, and specialty lines of coverage through a network of leading independent agents and brokers in the United States and specialty products through Lloyd's of London Syndicate 1200. As a mutual insurance company with more than 3,000 employees, Westfield has revenues in excess of $4 billion and more than $10 billion in assets.

The Small Business Underwriting Leader-Central Zone plays a critical role in shaping and executing business strategy in collaboration with Product, Sales, and Operations leadership. This position leads the Western Zone Underwriting Team, driving profitable growth through disciplined underwriting, influence, and inspirational leadership.

Key responsibilities include coaching and developing underwriting leaders, elevating underwriting acumen, and fostering a culture of innovation and accountability. The role requires strong problem-solving skills, the ability to lead through change, and a commitment to challenging the status quo to achieve territory objectives and financial goals.

Job Responsibilities

• Leads Western Zone Underwriting leaders and underwriters fostering a high performing culture that empowers the team to identify and solve problems, embrace change, and pursue continuous skill and career development.
• Drives a disciplined underwriting culture by setting clear expectations, coaching to sound decision-making, fostering collaboration between peers and Underwriting Practices, ensuring the execution of underwriting guidelines, authority and compliance requirements and promoting best practice sharing across the team
• Establishes, monitors, and drives performance and territory objectives—including quality, new written premium, policy count, retention (premium and count), responsiveness, and pricing utilization—to ensure consistent execution and achievement of business goals.
• Builds and sustain a collaborative partnership across Sales, Product, Underwriting and Operations to set strategic direction, monitor performance and market trends, and solve complex problems in support of territory objectives.
• Leads Small Business Underwriting initiatives that advance priorities and address complex, large-scale challenges in support of the overall Small Business Strategy.
• Builds and maintains talent routines including talent reviews, coaching, development planning, and talent pipelines to attract, retain and enable team members to set and achieve goals.
• Manages the demand and capacity across the Western Zone to deliver a best-in-class experience for agents while consistently achieving of our performance standards.
• Engages with professional industry groups and stays current on industry developments and regulatory changes to inform to decision-making and integrate into Small Business Underwriting

Job Qualifications

• 10+ years of Commercial Underwriting experience and 3+ years of people management experience.
• Bachelor's degree in related field and/or commensurate work experience.
• Master's degree in a related field is preferred.

Location:

Hybrid- defined as working three or more days per week in the office if the employee's residence is within 50 miles of Westfield Center, OH; OR Remote-if the employee resides more than 50 miles from Westfield Center, OH.

Behavioral Competencies

• Influence
• Inspirational Leadership
• Collaboration
• Develops talent
• Problem Solver
• Customer focus
• Effective Communication
• Ensures accountability
• Drives vision and purpose
• Critical Thinking
• Business insight
• Continuous learner
• Builds effective teams
• Manages complexity

Technical Skills

• Business Development
• Performance Management
• Commercial Lines Underwriting
• Strategic Decision Making
• Statistical Analysis
• Underwriting Strategy
• Business Process Improvement
• Customer Relationship Management
• Regulatory Compliance

This job description describes the general nature and level of work performed in this role. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, skills, responsibilities, knowledge, etc. These may be subject to change and additional functions may be assigned as needed by management.