Commercial Underwriter
Job description
Original text imported from Reed
Commercial Underwriter
West Midlands | Hybrid Field-Based Role
A leading UK insurer is looking to appoint an experienced Commercial Insurance Underwriter to join its growing regional underwriting team in the West Midlands.
This is a highly visible, broker-facing role where you'll work closely with a network of established offices, supporting profitable growth, underwriting complex commercial risks and acting as a trusted technical expert across the region.
What You'll Be Doing
- Underwriting and negotiating larger, more complex commercial risks and portfolios
- Supporting regional growth plans through sound underwriting and risk selection
- Acting as a technical referral point for complex cases and underwriting queries
- Coaching and developing colleagues to improve underwriting capability and decision-making
- Building strong relationships across underwriting, claims and distribution teams
- Analysing portfolio performance, identifying trends and driving profitable outcomes
What We're Looking For
- Strong commercial insurance underwriting experience with exposure to larger and more complex risks
- Proven ability to negotiate and trade effectively
- Technical underwriting expertise with a customer-focused approach
- Experience supporting, coaching or mentoring colleagues
- Progression towards, or attainment of, higher underwriting authority levels
- ACII qualified or working towards qualifications would be advantageous
What's on Offer?
- A high-profile role with significant autonomy and influence
- Exposure to complex commercial accounts and strategic portfolios
- Career progression within a highly respected insurer
- Strong support for professional development
- Competitive salary, bonus and comprehensive benefits package
If you're an experienced commercial insurance underwriter looking for a role that combines technical underwriting, relationship management and genuine influence, we'd welcome a confidential conversation.
Key skills
AI-extracted from the job advert
Application advice
5 AI-generated recommendations to maximise your chances.
⭐ Highlight your ACII qualification (or progress towards it) prominently in your Professional Qualifications section — the advert lists it as a key differentiator for shortlisting.
📊 Quantify your underwriting portfolio: e.g. "Managed a £12M GWP commercial portfolio across 200+ broker accounts, maintaining a loss ratio below 58%" to demonstrate scale directly relevant to this role.
🎯 Showcase broker-facing experience explicitly — the advert emphasises a 'broker-facing' remit, so include named broker network management or regional distribution relationships in your CV summary.
🤝 Include a dedicated bullet on coaching or mentoring colleagues, as the advert specifically calls out developing underwriting capability in others — quantify it: "Coached 4 junior underwriters, reducing referral escalations by 30%".
🌐 Tailor your CV's Personal Statement to reference complex commercial lines (e.g. property, liability, fleet) you've underwritten, as the role centres on larger, more complex risks rather than SME-level business.
Suggested CV bullets
3 bullets our AI drafted for this specific advert, mirroring its ATS keywords.
Add these 3 bullets under your most recent experience:
- •Underwrote and negotiated a £9M GWP complex commercial portfolio across 150 broker accounts in the Midlands region, sustaining a loss ratio of 54% over 3 consecutive years.
- •Acted as technical referral lead for 6 junior underwriters, resolving 40+ complex risk escalations per quarter and reducing referral turnaround time from 5 days to 2 days.
- •Coached 4 underwriting colleagues on risk selection criteria and pricing methodology, contributing to a 22% reduction in out-of-appetite submissions within 12 months.
Free to copy — tailoring requires a 30-sec CV upload.
Your cover letter is ready
We've drafted a cover letter for Stride Resource Management. Preview the opening, then unlock the full personalised version.
Letter preview — tailored to Stride Resource Management
Dear Hiring Manager,
Stride Resource Management's search for a Commercial Underwriter in the West Midlands aligns directly with the work I do every day — underwriting complex commercial risks, acting as a technical referral point, and building profitable broker relationships across a regional portfolio. The combination of underwriting authority, broker-facing influence and colleague development in this role is precisely the direction I want my career to take.
My background in commercial insurance underwriting spans complex property, liability and mixed-use portfolios, where I have consistently operated at higher authority levels and supported regional growth targets. I have coached junior underwriters to improve risk selection decisions and worked closely with distribution and claims teams to manage portfolio performance. I am progressing towards my ACII and apply a rigorous, data-led approach to identifying trends and maintaining loss ratios within appetite.
Free signup, no card needed. Export to PDF/Word requires a £1.99 trial (14 days).
Interview questions
10 questions generated from this advert.
Technical
- ›Walk us through how you assess and price a complex commercial property risk with multiple occupancies and unusual exposures.
- ›How do you analyse portfolio performance data to identify adverse trends and take corrective underwriting action?
- ›Describe your approach to setting and managing underwriting authority levels for a regional team.
- ›What technical criteria do you apply when deciding whether to refer a risk versus accepting it within your own authority?
- ›How do you stay current with market conditions, Lloyd's wordings and regulatory changes that affect commercial lines pricing?
Behavioural
- ›Tell me about a time you coached a colleague whose underwriting decisions were consistently outside appetite — what did you do and what was the outcome?
- ›Describe a situation where you had to negotiate a complex commercial account with a broker who was pushing back on your terms. How did you handle it?
- ›Give an example of when you identified a deteriorating trend in a portfolio and the steps you took to address it.
- ›Tell me about a time you acted as a technical referral point for a case that was outside normal guidelines — how did you reach your decision?
- ›Describe a situation where you had to balance profitable underwriting with maintaining a key broker relationship under pressure.
STAR answer examples
Model answers using the Situation-Task-Action-Result framework. Adapt to your own experience.
Tell me about a time you coached a colleague whose underwriting decisions were consistently outside appetite — what did you do and what was the outcome?
Describe a situation where you had to negotiate a complex commercial account with a broker who was pushing back on your terms. How did you handle it?