Insurance Underwriter

If you care about your family, health, home, or car, you know that insurance is the financial equivalent of food, shelter, clothes, and water: It’s a basic necessity that you’ve simply got to have. As an Insurance Underwriter, you play a critical role in assigning the right type of insurance to different people.

Indeed, everyone needs insurance. Not everyone, however, can get it. As an Insurance Underwriter, you separate the “haves” from the “have-nots” — the insured from the uninsured — by deciding whether or not to extend insurance to an applicant or a group of applicants. Whether it’s health insurance, home insurance, life insurance, or car insurance, an insurance company pays an Insurance Underwriter to play the part of “risk police,” which means you spend your days flipping proverbial coins, gambling on the likelihood of applicants filing claims.

It’s not as reckless as it sounds: When an individual or group files an insurance application, you review the application. Ideally, you want to insure people who will 1) pay their premiums in full and on time, and 2) avoid causing injuries and accidents that require them to file an insurance claim — which your company, of course, would have to pay.

Your number one duty, then, is mathematically reviewing applications, using statistics and probability to calculate perceived risk. Based on your assessment, you either approve or deny the application for insurance. If you approve it, you then set the rates and terms of the insurance policy, charging an appropriate premium based on the assessed level of risk.

You’re kind of like a Mathematician at a farm stand: You spend your days doing calculations, trying to avoid bad apples!