Team Lead, Underwriting

Pie's mission is to empower small businesses to thrive by making commercial insurance affordable and as easy as pie. We leverage technology to transform how small businesses buy and experience commercial insurance.   Like our small business customers, we are a diverse team of builders, dreamers, and entrepreneurs who are driven by core values and operating principles that guide every decision we make.

The Team Lead, Underwriting oversees the day-to-day operations and development of the Underwriter staff who support our internal and external partners.  The Team Lead, Underwriting will provide guidance and instruction to help support all UW functions as well as coordinate with the operations team lead on agent communications and assist with improving existing processes.  The Team Lead, Underwriting will serve as an escalation point for complex customer inquiries, questions and concerns.  This individual will also be responsible for handling first line referrals. This role requires strong attention to detail, advanced interpersonal skills, a metrics-based approach to operations and the ability to work cooperatively with other teams/departments.  

How You’ll Do It

• Provide guidance and instruction to support underwriter team members
• Manage underwriting team's adherence to targeted service levels.
• Oversee UW adherence to guidelines and procedures, while also evaluating processes and implementing improvements to better serve our partners.
• Coordinate "load balancing" with team members as necessary to meet SLAs.
• Ensure the team is trained and up to date on product appetite, pricing models, industry trends, etc.
• Provide any needed training to the team on process changes and system updates, update and maintain training and SOP materials.
• Serve as an escalation point for complex UW inquiries as well as other department inquiries & serve as first line referral underwriter for team members.
• Mentor, develop and grow team members for future needs and operational excellence
• Develop goals and metrics for team members and coach team members to meet and exceed performance indicators. Set clear expectations for deliverables and assign priorities that support the goals of the business.
• Provide continuous feedback and opportunities for professional development.
• Build and maintain useful documentation to help identify team knowledge gaps and build individual accountability and performance plans.
• Document performance, and provide recognition/reward for progress and provide feedback for improvement. Work in partnership with your leader on performance management.
• Identify hiring needs and recommend solutions to your leader. Participate in the interview process as needed to scale the team and organization as well as execution of effective team onboarding and training.
• Provide exceptional customer service by modeling the behaviors and strategies necessary to successfully interact and resolve the issues with partners in all channels.
• Present solutions to challenges the team may face and escalate accordingly within the Underwriting team, pod or interdepartmentally if needed
• Partner with Underwriting & Analytics leadership in maintaining a positive, customer-focused culture while ensuring all compliance and company policies are being met.
• Ad hoc leadership responsibilities
• Gather feedback from both internal teams and partners to improve efficiency.
• Work across departments to implement new processes, products or services specific to the partner channel.
• Assist the underwriting leadership team in providing reporting of data and benchmarking to the Pie leadership team.
• Facilitate cross functional teamwork and collaboration.

The Right Stuff

• High school diploma/GED is required.
• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience with some college coursework is preferred.
• ARM, CPCU, CIC, CWCP or other insurance designation is preferred.
• Minimum of 2-years experience in underwriting is required.
• Minimum of 6-months experience mentoring peers and/or direct reports is required. 
• Experience directly supervising others in a production environment is preferred.
• Intermediate communication (written and verbal) skills, to deliver more complex information effectively.
• Intermediate problem solving skills to be able to manage complex tasks and work through to solutions with little guidance and direction.
• Intermediate awareness of your own tasks, and how it impacts the team and deliverables.
• Basic leadership skills and some general experience leading work groups or task forces in specific projects.
• Familiarity with G-Suite and