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.

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

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

Nope, it's not a waste if you work as a medical underwriter. If work as a general insurance underwriter, that's lain cerita lah.

You see, when underwriting life/health insurance, we need to know a great deal about the basic science of the medical conditions as we read client's declaration, medical check-up report, lab report, MRI/Echocardiogram/X-ray/Ultrasound/ECG/EEG report, Dr's letter etc and assess the condition after gathering all these pieces of data.

However, graduating from biomed or other related bio courses only give us an advantage in learning the skills required in medical underwriting. Actually any Ali, Bala, Chong can become medical underwriter and excel in this field regardless of the courses taken in university. However, currently most companies will prefer those from bio-related background, easier to train as they are familiar with the terms/jargon used in medical reports.

No exams (as in getting license from governing body) required to become underwriter but most company will have internal exams/training before they give you authority to approve the contract/business on company behalf. That's why most insurance agent don't like underwriter. If underwriter say No, then they'll loose their business (together with their commission) but they always can appeal through their manager.

Still, it's up to individual preference whether this is a good job or not. Like bro yewkhuay is very successful in the day job and also in side business/MLM but some people don't like to do side business/MLM.

My stand is "you are free to choose but be prepare to bear the consequence". A man's meat is another man's poison (or is it the other way round?

General underwriter not so sure, sorry can't help you in this.

Agents need to take exams because they are governed by Bank Negara in order to protect the rights of customer, to prevent the customer from being cheated etc

Underwriter is hired mainly to safeguard the interest of the company. If we charge them more (meaning higher loadings) the customers have the rights not to buy from us and go to another company. Therefore whatever we do, won't harm the customers.

Haha... given enough time anyone also can both the medical term and the insurance terms. However, learning the medical terms is just the beginning. The next thing is to connect the different conditions together, correlate the clinical findings with the laboratory findings, client's medical history etc and decide. That's the hardest part and I'm still learning..haha.. Hence, medical underwriting is not an exact science as 1+1 doesn't equals to 2 here. It's more like a mixture of art and science. Sounds abstract eh?

RM1900 is ok la. Depends on you spend it only. If you want to drive big car, dress from head to toe all branded stuff, buy expensive gift for your girls, go clubbing every weekends, go dating eat candle-light dinner every day, etc double that amount also not enough lah. I guess that's one problem with young people (including myself) nowadays. We only look into how much we earn but we don't care how much we spend. No wonder so many people "die" because of credit cards debts. IMHO, pay is important but not the only thing which is important. How much you spend is also important.
RM1900-2100 is pretty decent to me

Don't worry Mei13. You still can learn while you on the job.
As long u get the job and willing to learn, that's ok already. It means your employer have confidence in you.
Btw, may I know which company u want to apply? can reply through PM if u want to be "privacy"

er most likely they will put you at entry level medical underwriter. Unless you are planning to join as financial underwrite (non-insurance related financial company), then your 2-year experience should be enough.

To become a good life uw, not necessary to get those professional certificates. Even if you have ALU, doesn't meet that you have a good underwriting skills. Yeah, may be can impress the HR ppl a bit but won't get you far.

Life underwriting field in Malaysia is very small. Those HOD and/or chief uw basically knows each others and if you are a good uw, your reputation is good enough for you to get higher salary if you want to switch company.

If you are so infamous, then perhaps may be you need to change field or go to another countries.

Guidelines is just a guidelines. They cannot cover A-Z of the multiple scenario which we face daily. The most important thing is know out to think and reason it out.

Getting an underwriting decision is just the first step. Getting your agent and/or client to accept your decision is the most difficult part.

If they don't accept your decision-> no business-> company cannot make money-> no salary/bonus-> no job.

Learn how to be a businessman but safeguards the interest of the rest of the policyholders. Anyway, we are in risk-taking business. Often time, there's no right or wrong in underwriting decision but of course, sometimes we made bad decision also.

To err is human

Sorry, bro, I guess my last sentence is too general and opened for different interpretations.
A lot of my friends are working in Sg and they are very good underwriters.

There are many reasons why someone might want to leave for another country. Better income, better future, more things to learn etc.

Being infamous is just one of the infinite reasons out there. Hope you don't "generalise" the whole statement.

The road is still very long to me as compared to others whom I met along the way. The future is bright as long as we keep learning and don't mind the long hours