Senior Vice President, Underwriting

Singlife Life Ltd; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Singlife seeks a senior underwriter to lead the Individual Underwriting team for life and health products, including high net-worth cases. You will: provide expert underwriting, guide governance, and mentor underwriters while coordinating with reinsurers and internal partners in Singapore.

Responsibilities include advising on governance, collaborating with Distribution, Product, Actuarial and Compliance, and driving consistent, high-quality risk selection and documentation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business, Actuarial Science, or related discipline.
• Professional certifications preferred: ACII, FLMI.
• Minimally 10-15 years of life and health underwriting experience, preferably with exposure in HNW / affluent segment.
• Strong case authority experience handling large-sum cases, jumbo or non-standard life/health cases, with ability to justify decisions clearly and independently.
• Experience with Distribution partners, including private banks or HNW distribution channels in Singapore or Asia is highly preferred.
• Experience engaging reinsurers, medical consultants, compliance, financial crime and actuarial stakeholders on complex cases is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Provide expert medical and financial underwriting assessment for individual life new business applications, post-inception reviews and post-claims reviews.
• Serve as a senior subject matter expert in individual life and health underwriting, providing technical leadership and coaching to underwriters.
• Advise stakeholders on underwriting governance, controls, roadmap and risk management matters.
• Represent Individual Underwriting in discussions with reinsurers on treaty arrangements and high-value cases.
• Partner with Distribution, Product, Actuarial, Legal and Compliance teams to support competitive propositions.
• Lead periodic underwriting guideline and process reviews to strengthen standards and controls.
• Lead the team to deliver underwriting services for partners and customers with balanced risk and service.

Skills

Financial underwriting

MAS regulations

Underwriting leadership

Stakeholder management

Communication

Documentation discipline

Governance mindset

Reinsurance liaison

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business, Actuarial Science

ACII

FLMI

Job description

Singlife is a leading homegrown financial services company, offering consumers a better way to financial freedom. Through innovative, technology-enabled solutions and a wide range of products and services, Singlife provides consumers control over their financial wellbeing at every stage of their lives.

In addition to a comprehensive suite of insurance plans, employee benefits, partnerships with financial adviser channels and bancassurance, Singlife offers investment and advisory solutions through its GROW with Singlife platform. It also offers the Singlife Account, a mobile-first insurance savings plan.

Singlife is the exclusive insurance provider for the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Home Affairs and Public Officers Group Insurance Scheme. Singlife is also an official signatory of the United Nations Principles for Sustainable Insurance and the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment, affirming its commitment to finding a better way to sustainability.

The merger of Aviva Singapore and Singlife was announced in September 2020 and created one of the largest homegrown financial services companies in Singapore in a deal valued at S$3.2 billion. It was the largest insurance deal in Singapore at the time. Singlife was subsequently acquired by Sumitomo Life in March 2024, one of Japan’s leading life insurers, which valued Singlife at S$4.6 billion, making the transaction one of the largest insurance deals in Southeast Asia.

Key Appointments

Responsible for leading over 20 underwriters in Singlife Individual Underwriting team, providing oversight and guidance on underwriting quality and controls for all new business applications and post-inception underwriting across all individual lines of products, including Life, Critical Illness, Health, Disability Income and Long Term Care, in both mass market and HNW segments.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide expert medical and financial underwriting assessment for individual life new business applications, post-inception reviews and post-claims reviews, ensuring decisions are made within delegated authority limits and in line with Singlife’s underwriting philosophy.
• Serve as a senior subject matter expert in individual life and health underwriting, providing technical leadership, guidance and coaching to underwriters to uphold underwriting quality, consistency and control standards.
• Advise stakeholders on underwriting governance, controls, strategic roadmap and risk management matters, ensuring underwriting practices support sound risk selection and fair-dealing outcomes for customers and representatives.
• Represent Individual Underwriting in discussions and negotiations with reinsurers on underwriting-related matters, including treaty arrangements, facultative placements and terms for complex or high-value cases.
• Partner closely with Distribution, Product, Actuarial, Legal and Compliance teams to support commercially competitive propositions while ensuring alignment with applicable guidelines, product design requirements, campaign parameters, customer propositions and complaint-handling standards.
• Lead periodic underwriting guideline and process reviews, leveraging data-driven insights, quality assurance findings and audit outcomes to strengthen underwriting standards, controls and operational effectiveness.
• Lead the team to deliver sought-after underwriting services for partners and customers, balancing service excellence with disciplined risk selection.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business, Actuarial Science, or related discipline
• Professional certifications preferred: ACII, FLMI
• Minimally 10-15 years of life and health underwriting experience, preferably with exposure in HNW / affluent segment
• Strong case authority experiencehandling large-sum assured, jumbo, facultative or non-standard life and health cases, with ability to justify decisions clearly and independently.
• Experience working with Distribution partners, including private banks or HNW distribution channels in Singapore or Asia is highly preferred
• Experience engaging reinsurers, medical consultants, compliance, financial crime and actuarial stakeholders on complex cases is preferred.

Key Skills & Competencies

• Strongfinancial underwriting expertise(income multiples, HNW balance sheet analysis)
• Deep understanding ofSingapore regulatory environment (MAS)
• Ability to assesscomplex ownership and wealth structures
• Commercial acumen with strong stakeholder management (private bankers, advisors)
• High judgment capability in ambiguous, bespoke cases
• Strong communication skills to articulate underwriting decisions clearly
• Strong documentation discipline, with ability to record underwriting rationale, assumptions, evidence gaps and escalation decisions clearly.
• Strong governance mindset, including comfort with audit, QA, reinsurance review and regulatory scrutiny.

Key stakeholders:

• Distribution
• Reinsurance partners
• Compliance & Financial Crime
• Product & Actuarial teams
• Risk, Legal, Medical, Operations, Data / Analytics and Customer Service teams