Vice President, Underwriting - Employee Benefits

The work we do has an impact on millions of lives, and you can be a part of it.We help protect our customers against life’s uncertainties. Regardless of where you work within the company, you’ll be helping provide protection and peace of mind when our customers need it most.

The Vice President, Underwriting is a senior leadership role accountable for defining, leading, and building the underwriting function across all Employee Benefits product lines. This executive will oversee a multi‑disciplinary underwriting organization and serve as a primary underwriting advisor to the SVP of Employee Benefits and leadership team on pricing strategy, risk selection, portfolio performance, and market growth opportunities. 

This role is ideal for a strategic, entrepreneurial, and tech‑forward underwriting leader with deep product expertise and a strong track record building scalable teams and processes for high‑growth Employee Benefits businesses. 

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Leadership & Underwriting Excellence 

• Serve as the underwriting leader for all Employee Benefits products, ensuring consistent, profitable, and market‑competitive underwriting strategies. 
• Drive underwriting governance, guidelines, philosophy, and portfolio performance. 
• Partner with Product, Distribution, Actuarial, Finance, and Operations to align underwriting strategy with market growth ambitions. 
• Provide thought leadership in emerging market trends, pricing needs, and competitive dynamics, particularly in the small business segment. 
• Define and maintain the EB Underwriting Governance Framework, ensuring consistent decision-making and clear risk-appetite management.  
• Use UW insights to influence EB divisional strategy, portfolio mix and pricing approaches.  

2. Build & Scale a High‑Performing Underwriting Organization 

• Lead, mentor, and develop a multi‑level underwriting team across product lines. 
• Recruit top‑tier talent and build a future‑ready team highly skilled in data‑driven and automated underwriting. 
• Establish clear performance expectations, career paths, and succession planning within the underwriting function. 
• Establish management and departmental governance routines that ensure consistent execution and performance accountability.  
• Develop a leadership bench and structured succession plans across all tiers of UW leadership.  

3. Complex Case & Aggregation Underwriting 

• Oversee underwriting strategy and execution for large, complex aggregation opportunities such as:  
• PEOs (Professional Employer Organizations) 
• Payroll companies 
• General Agencies (GAs) 
• National brokers 
• Develop scalable, repeatable frameworks for evaluating aggregator risk, pricing, guarantees, and block‑on‑block underwriting. 
• Deeply understand distribution economics and underwriting levers within the aggregator ecosystem. 
• Define aggregator specific governance standards to ensure disciplined growth, pricing alignment and controlled risk exposure.  

4. Technology, Data, Automation, and AI Enablement 

• Champion adoption of modern underwriting technologies, automated risk engines, and AI‑driven decision support tools. 
• Collaborate with Technology partners to build digital underwriting workflows, rules engines, dashboards, and analytics capabilities. 
• Improve quote‑to‑bind cycle time, accuracy, and consistency through automation and modernization. 
• Use data insights to inform risk selection, segmentation, pricing recommendations and performance improvement.  

5. Process Design, Operational Rigor & Continuous Improvement 

• Architect underwriting processes that scale—from intake to risk assessment to issuance. 
• Establish efficient workflows for small‑business underwriting while ensuring appropriate segmentation for larger or complex cases. 
• Implement process controls, audit routines, and quality assurance practices. 
• Partner with Operations to ensure downstream processes (policy issue, servicing, billing) align with underwriting requirements. 
• Define underwriting quality thresholds and embed continuous improvement routines  

6. Stakeholder Leadership & Cross‑Functional Partnership 

• Serve as a key member of the Employee Benefits leadership team, contributing to enterprise strategy and long‑term planning. 
• Partner closely with:  
• Distribution leaders on sales strategies and broker/aggregator engagement 
• Product & Actuarial on pricing and portfolio management 
• Claims on risk‑experience feedback loops 
• Technology on modernization and automation initiatives 

7. Portfolio, Performance, & Risk Management 

• Own underwriting profitabi