Director, Personal Lines Underwriting Operations Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Gore Mutual Insurance Company; Toronto; On-site; CAD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a Director of Personal Lines Underwriting Operations to lead a dynamic team. This role is pivotal in fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within underwriting operations. The successful candidate will inspire teams, drive strategic initiatives, and enhance service delivery to broker partners. With a focus on operational excellence and team development, this position offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of underwriting in a hybrid work environment. If you are a visionary leader with extensive experience in insurance operations, this role is perfect for you.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in Property & Casualty Insurance, with 10+ in operations.
• 5+ years of leadership experience with proven success in inspiring teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead and inspire underwriting teams to achieve profitable growth.
• Drive innovation in underwriting processes to enhance broker experiences.

Skills

Leadership

Communication Skills

Problem Solving

Analytical Skills

Strategic Thinking

Influencing Skills

Education

Post Secondary Education (Degree or Diploma)

CIP, FCIP, or CRM designations

Job description

Director, Personal Lines Underwriting Operations

Next Horizon is here. Fueled by investments in talent and technology, our bold strategy to transform is nearly complete.

At Gore Mutual, we’ve always set ourselves apart as a modern mutual that does good. Now, we’re proudly building on that legacy to transform our company—and our industry—for the better.

The Director, Personal Lines Underwriting Operations, is responsible for providing inspiring leadership to enable the profitable growth of our Personal Underwriting lines of business while ensuring optimized service delivery to our broker partners.

The role will directly manage a team of Underwriting Team Leaders and indirectly manage Underwriters. Additionally, the role will directly lead a Manager of Billing and a Manager of Workforce Optimization to support the Underwriting Team Leaders above.

The successful role holder is responsible for fostering a highly engaged, high performing culture of continuous improvement while advancing and executing strategies to enable agile and efficient Underwriting operations.

STRATEGY, VISION AND LEADERSHIP

• Lead and inspire teams. Develop opportunities for career pathing; identifying and developing emerging leaders; directing and assisting managers with goals surrounding employee engagement.
• Through an operational strategy lens, deliver strong visionary leadership to drive a collaborative, agile and high performing culture and organization that is profitable, innovative, and nimble.
• Contribute to the Strategy and objectives included in the business plan.
• Lead implementation of strategy to realize business goals in line with profitable growth ambitions.
• Champion, lead and manage change across the team and on various projects.
• Inspire a culture that drives improvement and innovation to process efficiencies while retaining customer interaction moments that build broker relationships and trust.

OPERATIONAL AND SERVICE DELIVERY EXCELLENCE

• Continuously elevate and maintain high standards of service and experience to brokers (in collaboration with business development teams where needed)
• Drive innovation in underwriting processes to enhance broker experiences. E.g., Streamline, simplify or consolidation of workflows.
• Collaborate with Corporate Underwriting teams to ensure timely and accurate risk assessment. Support rollout of Product and Pricing changes and provide insights to influence Product and Pricing roadmaps.
• Leverage access to performance metrics for enabling a data driven and performance-oriented Operations culture.
• Monitor performance metrics, identify bottlenecks, and implement process improvements.
• Oversee resource allocation and budget management for the UW operations unit.

BUILD, MANAGE AND COACH A HIGH-PERFORMING TEAM

• Inspire, develop & coach a high-performance team to continually come up with novel approaches to the most complex problems.
• Develop & retain top talent who can create the next line of leadership and excel within a diverse and inclusive environment.
• Ensure current and relevant training and development programs are implemented for all.
• Engage and connect team to the organization’s purpose, values, and leadership model behaviors.
• Provide daily strategic counsel, guidance, and leadership and act as role model to team, ensuring the team's success by managing work quality and productivity levels.
• Ensure constant professional development of team, consistently holding self and team accountable for behavior and performance.
• Commit to continuous learning and improvement of leadership skills for team to be able to set and pursue stretch goals.

GOVERNANCE

• Develop, implement, maintain, and monitor internal controls and governance for all operations including business processes, reporting and compliance to ensure achievement of objectives.

What will you need to succeed?

• +15 years of Property & Casualty Insurance experience preferably across Commercial and Personal Insurance.
• 10+ years of experience in operations, systems, organizational improvement.
• 5+ years of prior People Leadership.
• Proven leadership skills.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Superior problem solving and analytical skills, balanced with strong decision-making abilities.
• Ability to influence at all management levels both within and outside the organization.
• Proven success in leading and inspiring others through vision and values.
• Strategic thinking and solutions orientation.

Education

• Completed Post Secondary Education (Degree or Diploma).
• CIP, FCIP, or CRM designations not mandatory, but preferred.

Location

We’re a hybrid team that thrives on the energy and value of in-office collaboration. Our Underwriting team has two in-person anchor days a week, meeting primarily in our Cambridge head office with meetings in Toronto as needed.