In an industry built on relationships, one of the most revealing signs of change may be how rarely underwriters now use their voices.
“We had a junior underwriter, and this happens quite a bit,” said Russell Brown, principal at Safe Harbor Pollution Insurance. “They would get a complex pollution submission in, and they would respond with an email containing their list of questions. Then the broker would take an X amount of time and respond (and send the follow-up questions). This back and forth would take hours. It came down to almost a fear of or not having the ability to just pick up the phone and talk to the broker,” Brown said during a webinar hosted by Send.
That hesitation, Brown said, reveals a deeper problem. “As a junior underwriter, you have a tremendous workflow. And it’s all about efficiency and how much you can get out and how quickly you can get this out. But this also discourages the opportunities to actually listen to a client, actually learn, and build rapport.”
Brown didn’t mince words about what’s missing. “We are coming a little bit short,” he said. “Most training programs… focus primarily on the technical skills, risk assessment, clients, regulatory issues (which are obviously very important), but I think we fall short on teaching underwriters the soft skills of building trust and how to manage a relationship.”
He said younger underwriters are entering a digital workplace that rewards speed over connection. “We live in a digital age where everything is fast and almost transactional,” he noted. “You find a lot of junior underwriters analyzing the data and just going through [the motions], versus actually talking to our clients, our brokers.”
Even when mentorship programs exist, consistency is rare. “We have young mentors, and those are great, but I think we can all speak to that – in some positions, it’s very difficult to find a mentor, or they’re inconsistent at best,” Brown said.
That gap, he warned, could create a generation of underwriters who are technically sharp but commercially isolated – fluent in systems, but not in conversation. His prescription is simple: “We really need to institute a lot of relationship-building skills into our underwriting training programs, and maybe even put it on their performance reviews, just to really develop those kinds of skills. Because I think if we don’t do this as an industry, we’ll continue to fall short.”
Hayley Robinson, a non-executive director and advisor to the commercial and specialty markets (and previously Zurich Group’s chief underwriting officer) echoed Brown’s concerns, emphasizing that technical expertise alone isn’t enough.
“I do agree with Russ. I think good underwriters can clearly understand the technical detail, and they have command of what they're selling and the data required. But equally, they need to be good negotiators. They need to be people who can engage with the customer, particularly in larger risk,” Robinson said.
When you’re talking about large commercial customers, the end customer, generally speaking, wants to talk to the decision maker. And you want to put one of your good decision makers in front of that client, she added.
Robinson noted that the skill set required can vary depending on the type of insurance.
“The more complex the risk, the closer you need to be to the customer. You do need underwriters that have that really good balance of technical and interpersonal social skills.”
The industry-wide nature of this challenge is clear, according to Deborah McBrearty, client account lead for London Markets Insurance at Accenture. When asked if she’s seeing similar patterns across her clients, McBrearty didn’t hesitate.
“Absolutely. I've always been a huge advocate of bringing junior people into the room as senior underwriters are engaging with clients and building those relationships of trust so that the juniors can learn on the job and see the behaviors being modeled,” she said.
McBrearty is hopeful that technology could be part of the solution. “What I'm really optimistic about is the fact that some of the new technologies we have coming through will help to alleviate some of the administrative burden on our juniors, and actually allow more time to develop those soft skills and to bring our junior people along as part of that training exercise,” she explained.
She noted that many clients are excited about the potential of new AI tools to remove much of the routine administrative work, freeing up underwriters – especially those early in their careers – to focus on the relationship-building and communication skills that set great insurance professionals apart.
“I think that is going to change the way that we work and provide huge opportunities to really help develop the soft skills and do more of what makes us human,” McBrearty added.
