Insurance Underwriter Resume Examples & Writing Guide
An underwriter resume is judged on the book you handled and how it performed. Show the lines of business, premium volume, submission and hit ratios, your binding authority, loss ratio and retention, the systems you rate in, and any designation such as CPCU or AU.
Insurance underwriter resume example (commercial lines, mid-level)
A fictional underwriter with a normal progression: underwriting assistant, then personal lines, then commercial lines with binding authority. Every job names the book, the volume and how it performed.
Adaeze Whitfield
Commercial Lines Underwriter
Hartford, CT · (860) 555-0134 | a.whitfield.uw@email.com | linkedin.com/in/adaeze-whitfield-uw | CPCU, AU
Summary
Commercial lines underwriter with 9 years in property, general liability and workers' compensation for middle-market accounts. Manages an $18M premium book across 240 accounts with $2M binding authority. Improved the book's loss ratio from 61% to 48% over three years and holds renewal retention at 91%. CPCU and AU designated.
Experience
Commercial Lines Underwriter · Charter Oak Mutual Insurance (regional carrier, middle-market commercial)
May 2021 - Present
- Manages an $18M premium book across 240 middle-market accounts in manufacturing, contracting and habitational, with $2M binding authority and referral above that.
- Reviews 320 to 380 new submissions a year: exposure analysis, loss run review, financial review and pricing against underwriting guidelines; hit ratio moved from 22% to 31%.
- Improved the book's loss ratio from 61% to 48% over three years by non-renewing 26 accounts with adverse loss history and re-pricing 40 more at renewal.
- Holds renewal retention at 91% on profitable accounts through pre-renewal calls with agents 90 days out.
- Cut quote turnaround on clean submissions from 3.2 days to 1.4 by building a triage checklist now used by 6 underwriters in the unit.
- Handles facultative reinsurance placement on 12 to 18 accounts a year exceeding treaty capacity.
- Mentors 2 underwriting assistants and reviews their referrals before release.
Personal Lines Underwriter · Charter Oak Mutual Insurance
Jan 2019 - May 2021
- Underwrote homeowners, dwelling fire and personal auto across 4 states, handling 60 to 80 referrals a week outside automated rules.
- Reviewed coastal property exposures against catastrophe model output and applied wind deductible and roof-age guidelines on about 900 accounts a year.
- Reduced referral turnaround from 48 hours to 12 by rewriting the referral form to capture missing information up front.
- Completed the AU designation while carrying a full referral queue.
Underwriting Assistant · Nutmeg Insurance Services (independent agency and MGA)
Jun 2017 - Jan 2019
- Prepared 40 to 60 submissions a week for underwriter review: loss runs, ACORD applications, property schedules and prior carrier documentation.
- Issued policies, endorsements and certificates of insurance with a 99% first-pass accuracy rate on quality audits.
- Built the agency's submission tracker, cutting missing-information follow-ups by roughly a third.
Education
Bachelor of Science, Risk Management and Insurance
Connecticut Valley University, 2017
Certifications
- CPCU (Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter), The Institutes, 2024
- AU (Associate in Commercial Underwriting), The Institutes, 2021
- Connecticut Property and Casualty producer license (active)
Skills
What underwriting managers check first
Underwriting hiring is about judgment and profitability, and both can be evidenced on paper. Four things get read first.
- Lines of business and account size. Personal lines, small commercial, middle market, large account, excess and surplus, specialty. Carriers hire for the segment they need, and these are not interchangeable.
- Authority level. Your binding authority in dollars and what has to be referred. This tells a manager exactly how much independent judgment you have exercised and is the single most useful number on the page.
- Book performance. Premium volume, loss ratio, retention, hit ratio, submission volume, average account size. Underwriting is one of the few jobs where profitability is directly measurable, so leaving these off is a wasted page.
- Systems and appetite knowledge. Guidewire, Duck Creek, Applied Epic, ImageRight, plus the classes of business you know. Carriers converting systems care; so do carriers writing niche classes.
“The first thing I look for is authority and loss ratio. Tell me the size of your book, what you could bind without a referral, and how the book performed. A resume that only lists duties leaves me guessing whether you are a risk selector or a rate quoter.”
Insurance underwriter resume summary examples
Three or four lines: segment, lines, premium, authority, one performance number, designation. Skip objectives unless you are entry level.
Commercial lines underwriter with 9 years in property, general liability and workers' compensation for middle-market accounts. Manages an $18M book across 240 accounts with $2M binding authority. Took the book's loss ratio from 61% to 48% and holds 91% retention. CPCU and AU.
Personal lines underwriter handling homeowners, dwelling fire and auto across 4 states, working 60 to 80 referrals a week outside automated rules. Applies coastal wind and roof-age guidelines on about 900 accounts a year and cut referral turnaround from 48 hours to 12.
E&S underwriter writing hard-to-place property and casualty risks through 30 wholesale broker relationships. Bound $12M in premium last year on a 26% hit ratio, with manuscript form work on habitational and vacant building exposures.
Life underwriter reviewing individual applications up to $2M face amount: attending physician statements, lab and paramedical results, and financial justification. Handles 18 to 24 cases a day with a 96% quality audit score. FLMI designation completed.
Underwriting assistant preparing 40 to 60 commercial submissions a week and issuing policies at 99% first-pass accuracy. Completed the AINS designation and half the AU coursework. Seeking a small commercial underwriter role with binding authority.
Underwriting bullets: weak to strong
The failure pattern is describing the underwriting process, which every underwriter follows. Say what you decided and what the book did.
| Describes the process | Shows judgment and results |
|---|---|
| Underwrote commercial insurance policies. | Managed an $18M premium book across 240 middle-market accounts in manufacturing, contracting and habitational, with $2M binding authority. |
| Reviewed applications and determined eligibility. | Reviewed 320 to 380 new submissions a year on exposure, loss history, financials and pricing; moved the hit ratio from 22% to 31%. |
| Worked to improve profitability. | Took the book's loss ratio from 61% to 48% over three years by non-renewing 26 accounts with adverse loss history and re-pricing 40 more at renewal. |
| Maintained agent relationships. | Held renewal retention at 91% on profitable accounts by running pre-renewal calls with agents 90 days out on every account over $25,000 in premium. |
| Analyzed loss runs. | Analyzed five-year loss runs and open reserves on every submission, declining 14 accounts where frequency exceeded guideline thresholds despite broker pressure. |
| Priced accounts according to guidelines. | Applied schedule rating and experience modification within authority, documenting the rationale on every deviation for audit. |
| Improved turnaround times. | Cut quote turnaround on clean submissions from 3.2 days to 1.4 by building a triage checklist now used by 6 underwriters in the unit. |
| Worked with reinsurance. | Placed facultative reinsurance on 12 to 18 accounts a year exceeding treaty capacity, coordinating terms with the reinsurance broker before binding. |
| Handled catastrophe-exposed property. | Reviewed coastal exposures against catastrophe model output and applied wind deductible and roof-age guidelines on about 900 accounts a year. |
| Trained new staff. | Mentored 2 underwriting assistants and reviewed their referrals before release, cutting rework on incomplete submissions by about a third. |
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Skills for an insurance underwriter resume
Group by underwriting judgment, technical knowledge and systems. Avoid generic office skills; every applicant claims attention to detail.
- Risk selection: exposure analysis, loss run and reserve review, financial statement review, inspection and loss control report interpretation, class appetite matching, declination discipline.
- Pricing: manual and schedule rating, experience modification, deductible and limit structuring, pricing adequacy analysis, rate change tracking at renewal.
- Coverage knowledge: ISO forms and endorsements, manuscript wording, additional insured and contractual risk transfer, workers' compensation classification, umbrella and excess attachment.
- Portfolio work: renewal strategy, book segmentation, retention and hit ratio management, aggregation and catastrophe exposure, reinsurance treaty and facultative placement.
- Relationships: agent and broker management, marketing visits, negotiating terms without breaking guidelines, explaining a declination so the agent brings the next submission anyway.
- Systems: Guidewire PolicyCenter, Duck Creek, Applied Epic or AMS360, ImageRight, catastrophe modeling output from RMS or Verisk, plus Excel modeling for book analysis.
Designations and licenses: what to list
Insurance runs on designations. They are not required to work, but they are named in a large share of postings and they move salary bands. List the issuing body and the year.
CPCU (Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter), The Institutes - 2024
AU (Associate in Commercial Underwriting), The Institutes - 2021
API (Associate in Personal Insurance), The Institutes - 2020
FLMI (Fellow, Life Management Institute), LOMA - 2023
CPCU: 5 of 8 courses complete, remaining exams scheduled through 2027
Connecticut Property and Casualty producer license, active; nonresident licenses in 3 states
CPCU is the best-known property and casualty designation and takes several years; listing courses completed while you are working toward it is normal and viewed positively. AU, API, ARM and AINS from The Institutes are shorter and useful earlier. On the life and health side, LOMA's FLMI and the Academy of Life Underwriting's designations are the common ones. Producer licensing is state by state and is more often required for agency-side roles than for carrier underwriting, so check the posting and your state's insurance department rather than assuming.
Entry level: getting your first underwriting job
Most underwriters start as underwriting assistants, in claims, or in a carrier's development program. The resume has to show numeracy, judgment and comfort with rules.
- 1If you are an underwriting assistant, write your work as underwriting work: submissions prepared, accuracy rate, referrals handled, systems used, and any authority you exercised even informally.
- 2Coming from claims, lead with loss analysis: claims handled, coverage determinations, reserve setting. Claims experience is a genuine advantage in underwriting and most applicants undersell it.
- 3Coming from an agency, lead with the classes of business you quoted, carriers you placed with and your quote-to-bind numbers.
- 4New graduates should lead with a risk management or insurance degree, any internship, and quantitative coursework. Carriers run structured development programs and hire from campus.
- 5Start a designation before you apply. Even 'AINS complete, AU in progress' separates you from most applicants for an assistant role.
- 6Add any analysis you have done in Excel: pivot tables, loss modeling, book analysis. Underwriting is spreadsheet work as much as judgment.
Prepared 40 to 60 commercial submissions a week for underwriter review (loss runs, ACORD applications, property schedules) and issued policies and endorsements at 99% first-pass accuracy.
Handled 120 open property claims, made coverage determinations under the policy form and set reserves, with reserve accuracy within 10% at closing on 84% of files.
Quoted small commercial packages with 9 carriers, handled 25 to 35 quotes a week and converted 34% to bound policies.
Format, length and keywords
- One page under about eight years, two pages after. Reverse chronological, plain headings. No photo and no date of birth on a US resume.
- State your lines of business, premium volume and binding authority in the summary. Those three sentences do most of the screening work.
- Carrier applicant tracking systems match plain phrases: 'commercial lines', 'binding authority', 'loss ratio', 'hit ratio', 'renewal retention', 'ISO forms', 'Guidewire', 'CPCU'. Use the true ones.
- Put designations after your name only if you hold the full designation, and never abbreviate one you are still studying for.
- Name the segment in the employer line: '(regional carrier, middle-market commercial)' or '(E&S wholesale broker)'. Segment fit decides a large share of interviews.
- Check the arithmetic: nine years in the summary means nine years of dates below, and premium and account counts should be consistent between bullets.
Frequently asked questions
How do I write an insurance underwriter resume?
Lead with the book: lines of business, premium volume, account count and binding authority. Then write bullets around decisions and results rather than the underwriting process, including hit ratio, loss ratio, retention and turnaround. Add your rating systems and any designation such as CPCU or AU.
What skills should an insurance underwriter put on a resume?
Risk selection and exposure analysis, loss run review, pricing and schedule rating, coverage and ISO form knowledge, renewal and retention strategy, reinsurance placement, agent and broker relationships, catastrophe exposure review, and systems such as Guidewire, Duck Creek or Applied Epic.
What numbers should be on an underwriter resume?
Premium volume and account count, binding authority in dollars, submissions reviewed per year, hit ratio, loss ratio with a before and after, renewal retention, and quote turnaround time. These are the measures underwriting managers run their own units on.
Do I need CPCU to be an underwriter?
No, but it appears in a large share of postings and it moves salary bands. AU, API, ARM and AINS from The Institutes are shorter and useful earlier in a career; FLMI from LOMA is the common one on the life side. Listing courses completed toward a designation is normal and viewed positively.
How do I become an underwriter with no experience?
Most people start as an underwriting assistant, in claims, or through a carrier development program. Write assistant work as underwriting work with volumes and accuracy rates, sell claims experience as loss analysis, and start a designation before you apply. A risk management or insurance degree helps for campus programs.
Should I mention my binding authority?
Yes, in the summary and in the job bullet. Your authority limit in dollars, and what has to be referred above it, is the clearest signal of how much independent judgment you have exercised. Most underwriter resumes omit it, which is why the ones that include it stand out.
How long should an underwriter resume be?
One page under about eight years of experience, two pages after that or for senior and specialty roles. Two pages is only worth it if the second page adds book performance and account complexity rather than repeating standard underwriting duties.
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How this page was made: a first draft was written with AI assistance from cvplex's example library, then edited and fact-checked by the cvplex Careers Team. Examples are fictional composites; numbers are illustrative. Report an error via the editorial policy page.