Hi there.

What does it takes to be a underwriter in terms of character (someone who has patience? loves detail work?) and qualification?



This post has been edited by moOn_uNit: Jun 2 2006, 10:39 AM

underwriter for the assurance job 1 ?

Underwriters working in insurance company, for example Prudential.

This post has been edited by moOn_uNit: Jun 2 2006, 11:10 AM

that depends.... life or general insurance?..... if Prudential normally life, unless you're talking about the new islamic tie-up with HLA.

if general, needs strong product knowledge in terms of scope of insurance coverage, its exclusions, applicable clauses and such. must be damn good in balancing between loading, exclusion and excess.

if life insurance, need to have some actuarial knowledge and lots of product knowledge in terms of coverage and exposure. basically your job is to asses the application and categorise the applicant in what risk class (bad, good, preferred, moral hazard) and whether to accept the proposal or impose certain restrictions or requirements (medical checkup, stress test, loading, lower sum insured, etc) and finally to offer the proposer with a plan at a certain premium.

wallah.

What is the minimum qualification to enter this industry?
Thx in advance.

Did anyone know of or work as a life insurance underwriter??is it an interesting job?

for life underwriter...Biology graduated or with medical knowledge background canditate, if you got LOMA certificate then that's better!!

An underwriter must of course know the workarounds of law(insurance policies) and this is best if you have a degree which is associated with law in whatever type of insurance policy that your employer wants.

* Possess a recognized degree, preferably in Statistics, Mathematics, Business
Studies, Computer Science OR professional life insurance qualification
* Experience in system testing is an added advantage
* Good analytical and problem solving skills
* Strong communication skills in both written and spoken English

Erm is it too late to post here? hehe

Ok, underwriter.. what's this about? first, my background: grad with biomed degree, working as a medical underwriter for two years with a Life Insurance Company. When I first joined this company, I have no prior knowledge about insurance. The insurance I know is you pay money, you get protection and might earn some money in terms of bonus etc. Depends on company whether it's a general or a life insurance company, they will need different requirement for potential employee. What I'm talking here is purely on Life Insurance, not about general insurance
First, preferably require a bio-related degree: biomed/biochem especially. What you don't know about insurance, they will have internal training for you but about the Life Sciences, they can't teach you much. Gone are the days when anyone can become underwriter. Now when the market is getting competitive, they need someone who has bio-related background so that the new staff can learn faster as he/she already familiar with the science/medical term.
My starting salary is slightly over RM2K, not inclusive of bonus and OT.
Life of an underwriter..hmm tricky question.. Depends on company also. If you work with a company which practise manual system, then you can leave office sharp-sharp after office hour but you need to bring back the work to do (if you haven't finish your work) as manual system means paper and pen. If your company use computerised system, you need to stay in the office till your work finish. Office hour can drag till 12-13 hrs daily, depends on the volume of cases you need to process especially during month-end or year-end when the income of the agent depends on the number of cases they manage to send in and get processed. So you might end up sitting in front of pc for 10-11 hrs daily (minus out lunch and toilet break). Kinda passive work. If you like to walk around, talk to people, this job is definitely a no-no for you
Like what alqa mentioned, you need to have product knowledge and actuarial knowledge, but to me medical knowledge is equally important if not more important than the first two. This is because the actuarial and product specifications are dead stuff, meaning they are fixed in black and white. We just learn and refer to the guidelines/paper. However, it's different when comes to medical/health as different people though same age, gender, race, etc can have a whole lot of variety of term condition. Even though two people might have the same condition like hypertension, these two could have different loadings as we need to consider other variables like fat or not, got raised cholesterol or not, got diabetes or not etc. Hence we require the medical knowledge to help us to assess the conditions accordingly.
We do have guidelines but these guidelines are just for reference, not to be used as ultimate truth as these guidelines cannot possibly cover each and every combinations of health conditions.
Apart from the medical conditions as declared by client, we also need to determine whether the client is telling the truth or not and need to know where to seek out additional information about the client's condition. So kinda a treasure hunter cum private investigator too. Kinda fun too...and you get the chance to encounter a lot of weird and funny health declarations.
To me, this job is still okay but not many guys can last long as medical underwriter as this job could be boring to guys. I think male: female under writer is 7:3.

prepare to work really hard ..can be as early as 7.30 am right up to 10.00pm ..if you r not the type of fella that are willingly to sacrifice your time for your work..then duneed la... ull be staring at the pc for over 12 hours...your life is basically you and the pc... i quit cause i think its stupid.. pay is good..but no life...

Yep, agreed with LoveMeNot on the come in the morning part and staring at the pc part. I actually start my day from 6.30am. About whether no life or not, it's subject to individual preference, wouldn't discuss much about that. Cheers

i doubt the pay is good part, if u say pay = time working , may be...
no life, memang no life.....

the pay is only good if u work ur as* around the clock.

and yeah agree with tatmeng, life or no life, its up to you..some people may enjoy it n some may not..
but one thing i can say it, 2 mata can become 4 mata....really can juling straight your eyes la...

This post has been edited by LoveMeNot: Jun 2 2007, 04:37 PM

i still don quite agree, even if u work OT everyday, how much is the Max can earn from the company?
performance bonus?

with 6 months experience, basic salary and OT, one can earn up to 3k. i guess its quite reasonable for a newly grad..
but long term, im not too sure.

100% agreed. May be can use as stepping stones and earn some savings before jump to other jobs. If other jobs doesn't turn out so good, can come back to this industry. At least can put in the resume "X years of experience"

Haha replies are from 2 or 3 persons only..not many lah. Honestly speaking, being an underwriter really takes away a lot of your weekdays time. If you are still single, like me then may be still okay. If you have gf, then where got time for dating or other activities because by the time you finish work, you'll be dead tired. Wait, may be that's the reason why I'm still single okay okay just a cold joke... I believe there are other jobs which are also very time-consuming like auditor but underwriter is definitely in this category. Subject to individual preference

Pay....hmm very subjective also whether it's good or not but most company will pay slightly above RM2K. I'm not so sure about general insurance company though. The information I provided is mainly on life insurance.
Benefit..hmm.. typical benefits as in every MNC? increment will be about RM100-200 per year, depends on your performance.
Loss adjuster, kinda dangerous job especially when dealing with car accident. My father's friend is a workshop owner and he said most of the time they will "co-operate" with the loss adjuster to make a bigger claim like taking pictures from another damaged vehicle, knock a few more dents to it etc. If that loss adjuster doesn't want to "co-operate" siap lah dia... haha

for a biomed grad, there are more better career path u can choose other than the office or labwork. try not to lock urself too long in the office, get some outdoor explosure.

if i hav to OT everyday to get 3K , i might as well use my time spent on OT to do side business / MLM/ trade business.

just my 2cents....