Captives Underwriting Officer

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Reporting to the Large Commercial National Underwriting Officer (in partnership with the Captives Leadership), the Underwriting Officer will lead the underwriting strategy and execution for The Hartford’s Captives Solutions portfolio, including Single Parent Captives (SPC) and Group Captives. This role is accountable for portfolio management, underwriting appetite and guidance, authority maintenance and referrals, and for partnering across the enterprise to scale a profitable captive platform.
The Underwriting Officer will help frame strategic issues, drive program initiatives, and support disciplined growth while building an operating model that reduces manual workload, improves forecasting, and strengthens underwriting governance.
In addition, this position will:

• Lead development and execution of the Captives underwriting strategic plan and operating routines.

• Drive underwriting excellence through clear appetite, authority, referral governance, and quality assurance.

• Partner with Operations, Finance, Actuarial, Claims, Risk Engineering, Credit Risk and Reinsurance Accounting partners to improve end-to-end outcomes.

• Advance data, dashboarding, and forecasting capabilities to strengthen portfolio decisions and growth execution.

• Champion technology modernization and workflow simplification to increase underwriter capacity and scalability.

• Build and sustain a talent model that develops loss-sensitive expertise and mitigates key-person and retirement risk.

Specific Responsibilities:

Financial Execution:

• Owns (with Captives business leadership) the operating plan results for the Captives portfolio (rate achievement, retention, new business and profitability).

• Develops execution strategies to deliver plan commitments and monitors trends to proactively address variances in financial results.

• Establishes and maintains portfolio health monitoring (gross vs. net views, rate/premium adjusted monitoring, corridor/funding considerations where applicable).

• Supports disciplined profitable growth by improving submission-to-bind conversion through appetite clarity, broker engagement, and underwriting efficiency.

Product & Underwriting Leadership:

• Operates as a subject matter expert in Captives and loss-sensitive structures; provides thought leadership and support to product, underwriting, and go-to-market initiatives.

• Develops and socializes underwriting appetite guidance for SPC and Group Captives, including customer profile parameters and target segments.

• Holds underwriting authority and is responsible for referral risk decisions; ensures referrals and approvals are anticipated and managed proactively.

• Leads authority maintenance and cascades authority consistent with enterprise CUO/OCUO frameworks; partners to refresh referral best practices and accountability.

• Partners with Actuarial and Finance to support pricing consistency, unified success metrics, and improved analytics without manual workarounds.

• Improves underwriting quality by establishing a structured QA approach and strengthening individual account-level underwriting review where appropriate.

Strategic Priorities:

• Develop and execute a data strategy for Captives, recognizing differing needs of Group Captives vs. SPC (dashboards, program-like reporting, and forecasting tools).

• Prepare business cases for technology investment to address capacity constraints and reduce manual workload; ensure SPC and Group Captives are represented on technology roadmaps.

• Partner to modernize underwriting systems/workflows and integrate documentation/tools to streamline submission-to-bind and renewal processes.

• Map and document the SPC workflow end-to-end (submission through exhibit/binding) to identify pain points and automation opportunities.

• Drive operating model efficiency by shifting non-underwriting work to service partners where feasible (e.g., credit risk turnaround, reinsurance accounting, rating support).

• Strengthen integrated relationships and alignment across internal stakeholders (Operations, Claims, Risk Engineering, Finance/Actuarial, Credit Risk) and external partners (brokers, captive consultants, reinsurers).

• Support growth strategy initiatives including targeted broker penetration, cross-sell/umbrella collaboration, and exploration of new group captive opportunities in priority sectors.

Leadership & Talent Management:

• Provides direct and/or indirect leadership to underwriting and referral resources; establishes operating routines that maximize collaboration and connectivity.

• Builds a high-performance culture with peer-to-peer accountability, candid feedback, and shared learning.

• Establishes a role matrix, career progression, training and onboarding program for Captives underwriting talent; leverages loss-sensitive COE and enterprise resources.

• Drives succession planning and mitigates retirement vulnerability by developing bench strength through rotations, mentorship, and targeted upskilling.

• Partners with leaders on talent acquisition and pipelining; supports performance management and development planning.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or other related graduate degree preferred.

• CPCU or other relevant industry designation preferred.

• 10+ years of Commercial P&C insurance experience with underwriting and/or product leadership background.

• Demonstrated experience with loss-sensitive structures and/or alternative risk solutions; Captives experience preferred.

• Strong underwriting acumen and technical discipline; ability to guide risk selection, pricing decisions, and referral governance.

• Sound financial acumen with experience interpreting performance results and driving an operating plan.

• Ability to influence in a matrixed organization and collaborate effectively across underwriting, operations, actuarial, finance, claims, and risk engineering.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; able to translate insights into action and process improvements.

• Superior communication skills (written and verbal) with ability to engage confidently with senior leadership and external partners.

• Leadership/management capability with a track record of mentoring, coaching, and developing underwriting talent.

• Reporting to the Large Commercial / National Underwriting Officer (in partnership with the Captives Leadership), the Underwriting Officer will lead the underwriting strategy and execution for The Hartford’s Captives Solutions portfolio, including Single Parent Captives (SPC) and Group Captives. This role is accountable for portfolio management, underwriting appetite and guidance, authority maintenance and referrals, and for partnering across the enterprise to scale a profitable captive platform.

This role can have a Hybrid or Remote work schedule.  Candidates who live near one of our office locations will have the expectation of working in an office 3 days a week (Tuesday through Thursday).  Candidates who do not live near an office will have a remote work schedule, with the expectation of coming into an office as business needs arise.

Compensation

The listed annualized base pay range is primarily based on analysis of similar positions in the external market. Actual base pay could vary and may be above or below the listed range based on factors including but not limited to performance, proficiency and demonstration of competencies required for the role. The base pay is just one component of The Hartford’s total compensation package for employees. Other rewards may include short-term or annual bonuses, long-term incentives, and on-the-spot recognition. The annualized base pay range for this role is:

Equal Opportunity Employer/Sex/Race/Color/Veterans/Disability/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity or Expression/Religion/Age

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