Underwriting Manager

🛡️ We're Hiring: Underwriting Manager

📍 Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

🕒 Employment Type: Full-Time

💼 Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior

🌐 Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a risk-focused financial services organization committed to disciplined underwriting, responsible risk selection, portfolio quality, and sustainable growth. Our teams collaborate across Underwriting, Risk, Credit, Actuarial, Claims, Sales, Finance, Compliance, Legal, Operations, and Executive Leadership to make informed decisions while protecting organizational and customer value.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Underwriting Manager to lead underwriting strategy, risk assessment, approval processes, portfolio monitoring, underwriting governance, and team performance.

The ideal candidate will combine strong underwriting expertise with financial analysis, risk management, policy interpretation, portfolio analytics, regulatory awareness, and commercial judgment.

The role will oversee underwriting activities from initial application and risk assessment through approval, policy issuance, portfolio monitoring, renewals, and risk remediation, depending on the applicable insurance or financial-services environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement underwriting strategies, policies, guidelines, authority frameworks, and risk-selection standards aligned with organizational objectives.
• Lead day-to-day underwriting operations across assigned products, customer segments, industries, or geographic markets.
• Review and assess complex underwriting submissions and determine appropriate risk acceptance, pricing, terms, conditions, limits, exclusions, deductibles, collateral, or other requirements.
• Ensure underwriting decisions are consistent with approved risk appetite, underwriting guidelines, delegated authorities, and regulatory requirements.
• Analyze financial, operational, commercial, industry, geographic, credit, and other relevant risk factors.
• Review applicant information, financial statements, business plans, historical performance, claims experience, exposure data, and supporting documentation.
• Conduct detailed risk assessments for new business, renewals, amendments, and material changes.
• Evaluate complex or non-standard risks and determine appropriate escalation requirements.
• Establish underwriting approaches for emerging, specialized, or higher-risk sectors where appropriate.
• Review referrals that exceed individual underwriting authority or involve unusual, complex, or material exposures.
• Present significant risks and recommendations to senior management, risk committees, credit committees, or other approval authorities.
• Establish and maintain underwriting authority limits and escalation procedures.
• Ensure underwriting teams operate within approved delegated authorities.
• Review exceptions and deviations from standard underwriting guidelines.
• Monitor exception levels and identify recurring underwriting weaknesses or policy gaps.
• Develop and maintain underwriting manuals, guidelines, procedures, risk matrices, approval frameworks, and decision standards.
• Regularly review underwriting policies to ensure they remain appropriate for changing market conditions and risk profiles.
• Work closely with Actuarial teams to establish appropriate pricing assumptions, risk classifications, loss expectations, and portfolio targets where applicable.
• Analyze loss ratios, claims trends, frequency, severity, profitability, exposure concentrations, and other portfolio indicators.
• Work with Pricing teams to ensure underwriting decisions are commercially competitive while remaining consistent with risk-adjusted return objectives.
• Review pricing adequacy and identify risks associated with underpricing, adverse selection, or excessive competition.
• Monitor portfolio performance and identify emerging deterioration in risk quality.
• Develop portfolio-level strategies to manage concentration, accumulation, geographic exposure, industry exposure, counterparty exposure, and other risks.
• Conduct portfolio reviews and recommend corrective actions where risk performance falls outside approved parameters.
• Develop strategies for managing high-risk, underperforming, or deteriorating accounts.
• Coordinate with Claims teams to understand claims trends and incorporate relevant insights into underwriting decisions.
• Analyze claims experience and identify recurring risk characteristics that may require changes to underwriting standards.
• Support loss-prevention and risk-improvement initiatives.
• Work closely with Sales, Distribution, Brokers, Relationship Managers, and Business Development teams to evaluate new opportunities.
• Provide underwriting guidance during client and broker discussions.
• Explain underwriting requirements, risk decisions, terms, conditions, and documentation requirements to internal and external stakeholders.
• Support negotiations while maintaining underwriting discipline and risk appetite.
• Review broker submissions and assess the completeness and quality of supporting information.
• Develop strong relationships with brokers, agents, corporate clients, financial institutions, and other relevant business partners.
• Ensure underwriting files contain complete and accurate documentation supporting all material decisions.
• Maintain comprehensive underwriting records, approval documentation, risk assessments, pricing information, exceptions, referrals, and correspondence.
• Monitor turnaround times and ensure underwriting decisions are delivered within agreed service standards.
• Identify process bottlenecks and implement improvements to increase underwriting efficiency without compromising risk quality.
• Establish and monitor underwriting KPIs covering volume, turnaround time, profitability, risk quality, exceptions, portfolio performance, and service levels.
• Use data analytics and underwriting technology to improve risk assessment, decision-making, automation, and portfolio monitoring.
• Evaluate underwriting platforms, decision engines, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies that can improve underwriting accuracy and efficiency.
• Ensure appropriate data-quality standards are maintained across underwriting systems and reporting.
• Work with Compliance, Legal, Risk, and Internal Audit teams to ensure underwriting activities comply with applicable laws, regulations, policies, and governance requirements.
• Monitor regulatory developments and assess their impact on underwriting policies and procedures.
• Support internal and external audits, regulatory reviews, risk assessments, and governance activities.
• Ensure appropriate controls are in place to identify fraud, misrepresentation, sanctions concerns, conflicts of interest, and other material risks.
• Coordinate with fraud and financial-crime teams where underwriting processes require enhanced due diligence.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Performance will be measured through a combination of underwriting, risk, financial, operational, and service KPIs, including:

• Underwriting profitability
• Loss ratio
• Combined ratio where applicable
• Risk-adjusted return
• Portfolio growth
• New-business conversion
• Renewal retention
• Risk-selection quality
• Pricing adequacy
• Claims frequency
• Claims severity
• Portfolio concentration
• Risk-exposure growth
• Underwriting turnaround time
• Referral turnaround time
• Exception rate
• Authority-compliance rate
• Underwriting accuracy
• Documentation quality
• Broker/client satisfaction
• Regulatory compliance
• Audit performance

Candidate Profile

The successful candidate should have strong experience in underwriting, risk management, insurance, credit assessment, financial services, or a closely related discipline.

Experience managing complex commercial, corporate, financial, property, casualty, specialty, life, health, or other underwriting portfolios would be advantageous depending on the organization's business model.

The candidate should demonstrate strong risk judgment and the ability to balance commercial opportunities with disciplined risk selection.

What You'll Bring

• Proven experience in underwriting, risk assessment, insurance, credit, or financial services.
• Strong understanding of underwriting principles, risk selection, pricing, and portfolio management.
• Experience assessing complex or high-value risks.
• Strong financial and commercial analysis capabilities.
• Ability to interpret financial statements, exposure information, claims history, and other risk data.
• Experience managing underwriting authorities, referrals, exceptions, and escalations.
• Strong understanding of risk appetite, underwriting guidelines, and governance frameworks.
• Experience working with Actuarial, Claims, Sales, Brokers, Risk, Compliance, and Finance teams.
• Strong portfolio-analysis and performance-monitoring capabilities.
• Experience developing or improving underwriting policies and procedures.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Excellent negotiation, communication, presentation, and stakeholder-management abilities.
• Strong attention to detail and ability to make sound decisions under time constraints.
• Experience with underwriting systems, risk platforms, analytics tools, or automated decision engines.
• Advanced Excel and data-analysis capabilities.
• Experience with predictive analytics or AI-enabled underwriting tools is advantageous.
• Strong knowledge of regulatory and compliance requirements relevant to underwriting.
• High level of integrity, professional judgment, and risk awareness.
• Ability to manage multiple submissions, renewals, referrals, and strategic initiatives simultaneously.
• Ability to work independently and effectively within a fully remote environment.
• Relevant degree in Finance, Economics, Business, Actuarial Science, Risk Management, Insurance, Accounting, or a related discipline.
• Professional qualifications such as ACII, CPCU, ARM, CII, CFA, FRM, or relevant credit/risk certifications are advantageous.
• Experience working within the UAE or wider GCC insurance and financial-services market is highly desirable.