The Director, Specialty Underwriting provides strategic leadership for the Specialty Underwriting organization, ensuring profitable growth, underwriting excellence, and exceptional broker and customer relationships. This leader is responsible for establishing underwriting strategy, driving portfolio performance, developing talent, and partnering across the organization to achieve corporate objectives. The Director serves as a key leader within Specialty Markets, influencing business decisions, underwriting appetite, and long-term market strategy.
Primary Responsibilities
- Provide strategic leadership for the Specialty Underwriting organization, aligning underwriting philosophy, portfolio management, and business objectives with corporate strategy.
- Lead, develop, and mentor underwriting leaders and staff, fostering a high-performance, collaborative culture focused on accountability, engagement, and continuous improvement.
- Establish underwriting strategies that drive profitable growth while maintaining disciplined risk selection and pricing.
- Monitor portfolio performance, loss trends, rate adequacy, retention, and new business production, implementing corrective actions as necessary.
- Serve as the senior underwriting authority for highly complex accounts, referral decisions, coverage interpretation, pricing exceptions, and authority management.
- Partner closely with Distribution, Claims, Risk Control, Actuarial, Product, Legal, Finance, and Operations to execute strategic initiatives and improve customer outcomes.
- Build and strengthen executive-level relationships with key brokers, producers, clients, captive members, and industry partners.
- Identify emerging market opportunities and competitive trends, recommending changes to underwriting appetite, products, pricing, and distribution strategies.
- Lead underwriting governance, ensuring compliance with underwriting guidelines, regulatory requirements, delegated authorities, and corporate risk appetite.
- Drive operational excellence by identifying process improvements, technology enhancements, workflow efficiencies, and automation opportunities.
- Champion underwriting consistency through coaching, technical training, peer reviews, and best practice development.
- Develop succession plans and talent strategies to ensure organizational capability and future leadership strength.
- Collaborate with senior leadership on annual planning, forecasting, staffing, budgeting, and performance objectives.
- Represent the organization at industry events, broker meetings, and strategic customer engagements.
- Demonstrate commitment to the Company's Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and ensure compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and company policies.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Typically 10+ years of progressively responsible commercial casualty underwriting experience with a property and casualty insurance carrier.
- Minimum 5 years of underwriting leadership experience managing teams, portfolios, and business strategy.
- Demonstrated success leading specialty, captive, or loss-sensitive underwriting operations.
- Expert knowledge of casualty underwriting, captive programs, large deductible programs, retrospective rating, self-insured structures, collateral management, and alternative risk financing.
- Strong financial and portfolio management skills, including profitability analysis, pricing strategy, trend analysis, and performance measurement.
- Proven ability to develop underwriting talent, build high-performing teams, and lead organizational change.
- Extensive relationships within the broker and agency marketplace and demonstrated success growing profitable distribution partnerships.
- Excellent executive communication, negotiation, presentation, and influencing skills.
- Strategic thinker with strong analytical, decision-making, and organizational leadership capabilities.
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively across multiple business functions and influence senior leadership.
- Willingness to travel to support key broker relationships, customer meetings, industry events, and team development.
- CPCU, ARM, or other professional insurance designation strongly preferred. MBA or advanced business degree is a plus.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and experience
- Typically 10+ years of progressively responsible commercial casualty underwriting experience with a property and casualty insurance carrier
- Minimum 5 years of underwriting leadership experience managing teams, portfolios, and business strategy
- Demonstrated success leading specialty, captive, or loss-sensitive underwriting operations
- Expert knowledge of casualty underwriting, captive programs, large deductible programs, retrospective rating, self-insured structures, collateral management, and alternative risk financing
- Strong financial and portfolio management skills, including profitability analysis, pricing strategy, trend analysis, and performance measurement
- Proven ability to develop underwriting talent, build high-performing teams, and lead organizational change
- Extensive relationships within the broker and agency marketplace and demonstrated success growing profitable distribution partnerships
- Excellent executive communication, negotiation, presentation, and influencing skills
- Strategic thinker with strong analytical, decision-making, and organizational leadership capabilities
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively across multiple business functions and influence senior leadership
- Willingness to travel to support key broker relationships, customer meetings, industry events, and team development
- CPCU, ARM, or other professional insurance designation
- MBA or advanced business degree
PMA Companies Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about PMA Companies and has not been reviewed or approved by PMA Companies.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time off is described as generous, with a sizable PTO bank and a broad paid-holiday schedule. Feedback suggests the ability to accrue and use substantial leave is a standout element of the package.
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Retirement Support — Retirement support includes a 401(k) with company contributions and immediate vesting on certain employer dollars. Profit-sharing and automatic eligibility are positioned as meaningful additions to total rewards.
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Flexible Benefits — Benefits are organized in a cafeteria-style format with multiple medical plan choices, HSA options, FSAs, and a broad set of voluntary coverages. Feedback suggests this flexibility enables tailoring coverage to individual needs.
PMA Companies Insights
What We Do
PMA Companies provides risk management solutions and services, specializing in workers’ compensation and offering property & casualty insurance, in the United States. Headquartered in Blue Bell, PA, PMA Companies is a member of Old Republic Companies. Old Republic International Corporation (NYSE: ORI) is one of the nation’s 50 largest publicly held insurance organizations. PMA Companies includes: PMA Insurance Group, specializing in workers’ compensation, and providing other commercial property & casualty insurance products; and PMA Management Corp. and PMA Management Corp. of New England, providing results-driven TPA and Risk Services specializing in workers’ compensation and liability. We maintain a large client retention rate of 90% or higher and a client satisfaction rate of 96% per an independent survey. At PMA, we still build relationships the "old-fashioned way." Our clients know we care. They know we say what we do and do what we say. And they know that they can count on us to deliver tangible value to their business and to work passionately on their behalf.
