What skills does an underwriter need?

Underwriters need to develop superb analytical and decision-making skills in order to be hired and successfully carry out their responsibilities. These skills will allow them to gather all the information necessary to assess the risk of financial investment and then efficiently and accurately assess whether their company should take it on.

This will include developing solid math skills. This is because an understanding of statistics and probabilities will ensure that the underwriter is able to have quantitative numbers to back up their decisions.

Much of the job is determining an appropriate rate for an applicant based on how likely that applicant is to file a claim based on available data.

This statistical analysis is done with computer software specific to the industry. Underwriters need to be adept at operating the software and making sure to input data appropriately.

Each applicant is different and has different sets of data that will be needed to make a decision, and each data point can impact applications in different ways. It is important for insurance underwriters to be as precise as possible with this information in order to make the best decisions.

While some decisions are easy, many situations require insurance underwriters to assess multiple factors related to a particular applicant. Even underwriting software is just a starting point for many decisions; skilled underwriters need to evaluate automated recommendations against their own best judgment.