Home Office Underwriting

What does the Home Office Underwriting Department do?

Admiral’s Home Office Underwriting (HOU) team is responsible for a broad range of functions that are critical to the profitable and efficient operations of Admiral’s business. Their main function is to integrate both Home Office Casualty and Professional Liability with Product Management and Development to provide support and guidance in a collaborative manner across the organization. This approach enables the team to deliver innovative solutions to our customers.

Join Admiral’s Home Office Underwriting department and be a part of a dynamic team driving innovation in the E&S market!

View Home Office Underwriting Positions

Ensuring Stability through Reinsurance and Audits

The HOU team implements thorough assessments to ensure Admiral is compliant with industry regulations and aligned with best practices. They do this by negotiating reinsurance arrangements in order to protect the company from substantial financial losses and, therefore, ensure a balanced risk portfolio. In addition, they conduct audits and reviews of underwriting practices to maintain high standards and accuracy.

This strategic approach not only mitigates potential volatility but also enhances the overall stability of Admiral’s operations.

Diverse Colleague Brainstorm Discussing Ideas at Briefing

Diverse Executive Business Team Group Discuss Project at Boardroom Meeting

Enhancing Underwriting through Risk Management and Data-Driven Insights

The HOU team plays a crucial role in supporting the Underwriting department by effectively managing high-hazard account referrals. This involves an analysis of data to identify trends that inform underwriting’s decision-making. The team is also responsible for creating and updating underwriting guidelines and policies to ensure consistency and compliance across all operations.

To enable underwriting to make informed and effective decisions, the HOU team develops applications designed to collect all necessary data points needed for those decisions.

Additionally, the team regularly publishes white papers that address emerging issues within the industry, providing valuable insights and findings that can guide Admiral’s strategies.

Crafting Solutions, Optimizing Implementations, and Building Partnerships

The Product Management team is responsible for developing, managing, and implementing new and existing insurance products designed to meet the unique needs of policyholders. This involves a thorough analysis of both proprietary and external industry data to provide comprehensive coverage solutions that support underwriting.

Their main responsibilities include creating manuscript endorsements that provide innovative coverage solutions tailored to address the unique needs of our business partners. They also focus on the integration, configuration, and optimization of insurance product implementations within our IT systems. Additionally, they establish and lead comprehensive product training sessions, assist in developing marketing content for both new and existing products, and nurture relationships with external risk management vendors.

What’s it like to work in Admiral’s Home Office Underwriting Department?

Learn more about some of our Home Office Underwriting teammates and hear what they like most about their roles, what surprised them most about Admiral, and some of the things they are most passionate about in their personal lives!

Erika Nichols

Home Office Senior Underwriter – Professional Liability

Moorestown, NJ

Learn more about Erika

What is your area of expertise within Home Office Underwriting (HOU)?

My areas of expertise within Professional Liability HOU are assisting with underwriting audits, application creation and updates, underwriting bulletin creation, guideline updates and training for Production Underwriting. My responsibilities can change based on the needs of the field underwriters. HOU projects stem from updates and ideas that the production underwriting teams have in order to become more profitable and to write more business. Our goal in HOU is to make sure underwriters understand our guidelines and procedures in order to write more profitable business and protect the bottom line.

What does an average workday look like?

An average workday revolves around our current projects to help support all underwriting needs. When I login in the morning first, I take care of reoccurring monthly or weekly items like reporting and reminders to help our underwriting processes. Next, I will check on the status of my current projects, follow up with outstanding items and then start working on projects that are currently on my desk. I usually have meetings with other teams to iron out details on projects and to make sure everyone is on the same page. In Home Office Underwriting we work on a lot of detail-oriented projects and there can be a lot of editing and revisions. We like to make sure everything is perfect before releasing to the field!

What do you enjoy most about your role?

In the Home Office Underwriting Department, we have the opportunity to work with teams all across Admiral from all different offices. I enjoy being able to collaborate and meet with different people to complete new projects that contribute to the success of underwriting. Everyday is something new and we are involved in multiple projects at once. Collaborating with Production Underwriting, Claims, Finance, Actuary and Marketing has given me new insights to the overall functions and responsibilities of Admiral as a whole.

What is something you really geek out about?

I love interior design. Designing rooms with different colors, patterns, and textures is something I really enjoy. Being able to add personality to a space while also keeping it classic and timeless is so fun and rewarding to me when I see the finished product!

If you could max out a credit card at any store, where would it be?

Target! One-stop shopping; between their clothing, home goods and overall essentials Target never disappoints. It is one of my favorite stores to find great looks for less.

What is something most people don’t know about you?

I was a cheerleader in college at Saint Joseph’s University, Go Hawks!

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Jim Kantner

Executive Underwriter, Product Management

Moorestown, NJ

Learn more about Jim

What is your area of expertise within Home Office Underwriting (HOU)?

I work on the Product Management team within HOU and we support our Professional Liability and Casualty departments with developing, implementing, and maintaining new and existing insurance products along with supporting the production underwriters on a daily basis with complex accounts and coverage requests. I specialize in our Professional Liability products based on my background as a production underwriter in these lines and have a particular focus on drafting policy language for custom requests and drafting new and updated policy forms.  I also help with a lot of the training we provide to our production underwriters when we launch new products, refresh existing products, or have trending topics the field would like guidance on.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I’ve always really enjoyed any form of teaching and helping people and, whether I’m making a cheat sheet to easily understand one of our insurance products or on the phone with an underwriter working out a custom coverage request so they can win a deal, I get to do a lot of that in this role. A lot of what we do is very customized and the accounts we work on can be very complex so it’s a lot for our underwriters to keep up with and I just really love getting to be the phone call that gives them a solution and the confidence to answer our brokers’ questions.

What’s something you’ve worked on at Admiral that you’re proud of?

We just did a complete refresh on our Technology Professional Liability product and I got to be a big part of that project and contribute a lot of my ideas to enhance the policy itself, how we rate and underwrite Tech accounts, and helped develop a lot of the training and marketing material for the refreshed product. I am really proud of this project in particular because my background as a production underwriter was heavily weighted in this product line and I remember when I first joined Admiral five years into my career, I told my hiring manager that my goal was to help grow the book to the point where our product management team needed more support and I could help improve the product. I thought about that conversation a lot as we were launching the refreshed Tech product and was really proud that I did what I set out to do when I first joined Admiral.

What is something you really geek out about?

Competition cooking shows. I like cooking and I love watching people great at what they do compete against each other. It’s really fun getting to watch their minds work so quickly, solve the problem, and then execute every aspect of the dish at a restaurant-quality level in a tight timeframe. I’ve learned a lot of tips and tricks in the kitchen and just have a lot of fun being the final judge from my couch and rooting for my favorite chefs.

If you could max out a credit card at any store, where would it be?

Crate & Barrel and I may have come close recently. Whether you’re moving and need all new stuff (like me), or you want some good seasonal decorations, they have the timeless designs that I love for every room.

What is a skill or talent you wish you had?

I wish I could sing, with talent. I’m the person you see at the red light singing along to whatever song is on and wishing I could have my own Eras tour. I like to write and have always appreciated a singer/songwriter’s ability to connect with people through the way they write and perform a song and would love to be able to experience that.