Reporting to the Head of Worksite, the Head of Underwriting is responsible for developing and executing a underwriting strategy to drive revenue, manage risk and grow our voluntary insurance and executive disability product market share. Working in partnership with the Heads of Distribution Strategy, National Sales and Product, drive alignment across the organization, to create effective and competitive underwriting packages across our product lines that meet our distribution channels' needs.

This role will provide leadership and oversight for hiring, developing, motivating, retaining and managing underwriters across all products including evaluating capacity plans to ensure we hit market response times.

The role requires deep knowledge of the markets we serve to provide competitive, timely, quality offers; set a strategic path of continuous and iterative improvements for Underwriting, aligned with the overall business strategy by proactively partnering with key partners in distribution, product and corporate actuarial. Individual will provide the Head of Worksite and peers with market feedback and dependencies critical to the broader organization's success.

Responsibilities:

Seasoned leader who will help MassMutual grow its business profitability and through multiple channels. Align underwriting directly with financial plans for current and future years. Build an underwriting/risk policies that are visible for the organization to understand and follow. 

Partner with distribution and product to continually bring trends and feedback to leadership team and ideas on how we improve our capabilities. 

Be responsible for new offers and focus on retaining existing business profitably.

Represent MassMutual as a thought leader at conferences, industry conferences and meetings, etc.

Manage and understand financial levers of the worksite business; in particular develop and manage underwriting and quote activity and results in a deep data driven way. Provide insights to organization on data trends, vs the market and competition. 

Lead with data - provide timely leading and lagging indicators, results and analysis to all levels of the organization.

Represent Worksite Underwriting as part of the Worksite Sr. Leadership team, addressing sales and distribution needs and concerns, while contributing as a general manager responsible for delivering on any and all key business metrics committed to by the Worksite business.

Provide market insights on competitive new products and markets, and any changes required to achieve business results.

Be a strong role model for implementation and sustainment of MMWay business system. Foster an atmosphere and culture of continuous improvement where problems are embraced and explored through open and candid discussion and effective problem solving, with an enduring focus on process, not people. Streamline processes, improve customer satisfaction, create efficiencies, and grow employee engagement.

Key Responsibilities:

• Strategic Focus:  

  • Understand market competitive levers, advisor dynamics to bring win/loss and other pertinent data to help drive UW strategy and execution and support overall sales growth while maintaining profitability. 

  • Ensure leading and lagging indicators are transparent to the key stakeholders in the organization. 

  • Build and drive new capabilities to ensure we are competitive in the market

  • Partner with head of distribution strategy to interact with field committees to best position Worksite in the market

  • Work closely with product to ensure profitability measures are met, reviewed, understood by the leadership team and have a line of sight into overall sales and persistency measures

• Production & Quality:  

  • Daily (and active) production level management of UW professionals. 

  • Be “a step ahead” to understand and inform the Worksite Leadership Team of demand / capacity gaps. 

  • Hire and develop staff for performance, manage capacity effectively to drive output and sales expectations. 

  • Actively manage the bottom 10% to also change culture.

• Customer Advocacy:

  • Build communication, clarity, trust and transparency to make UW's “offer makers” with our distribution partners. 

  • Eliminate friction and drive customer delight (profitably).

• Learning & Development:  

  • Move each of the UWs to active seekers of knowledge. We need a culture of market competitiveness and customer advocacy to ensure alignment to strategy and delivery of goals.

Requirements:

• 15+ years managing UW teams in a fast-paced environment

• Deep Experience in Voluntary or Group benefits industry with solid quality results and ability to manage and navigate case and advisor complexities

• Demonstrated behaviors that excel in the MM competency framework. Especially Inclusion, Communication, Leading Others, Agility and Resilience.

• Maintain and iterate a balanced scorecard (performance metrics; customer advocacy; Team first; development focused) for each UW. Performance manage to it

• Collaborate and serve as strategic advisor to key stakeholders and for the Worksite business

• Experience communicating and working with technology, product owners and Customer Care professionals – including Insurance Advisors/Brokers

• Limited travel

• Ideally Springfield, or Boston, MA based

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Salary Range: $180,000 to $225,000 plus annual bonus and long-term incentives

MassMutual is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer Minority/Female/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity/Individual with Disability/Protected Veteran. We welcome all persons to apply. Note: Veterans are welcome to apply, regardless of their discharge status.
If you need an accommodation to complete the application process, please contact us and share the specifics of the assistance you need.

Offers of employment are contingent on the completion of satisfactory references, background investigation, and (if applicable) any federal securities law requirements/FINRA regulations (including fingerprinting) and/or passing of a drug screening.

At MassMutual, we focus on ensuring fair, equitable pay by providing competitive salaries, along with incentive and bonus opportunities for all employees. Your total compensation package includes either a bonus target or in a sales-focused role a Variable Incentive Compensation component. For more information about our extensive benefits offerings please check out our Total Rewards at a Glance.