Assistant Underwriter

An assistant underwriter helps decide whether an insurance company should take on a particular risk - a factory, a fleet of lorries, a cargo shipment, a cyber attack exposure - and at what price and on what terms. You work inside an insurer, a Lloyd's syndicate or a managing general agent, reviewing submissions that come in from insurance brokers, pulling together the information needed to price them, and handling the smaller or more routine cases yourself under supervision. In practice you are the engine room for one or two senior underwriters: preparing their work, keeping their accounts in order, and gradually being given your own authority to say yes or no.

Starting salary: £25k–£35k
Live graduate jobs: 6 open now
Main way in: Insurance graduate schemes run by large composite insurers…
They usually ask for: A degree in any subject is the usual starting point and the…

Approximate graduate salary

Typically somewhere around £25,000–£35,000 to start, though this varies widely. London market and Lloyd's roles sit at the upper end and sometimes above it; regional commercial insurance offices outside London often start lower. Bonuses are common and can be meaningful once you have your own book, and most employers fund CII exams on top of salary.

What you'd actually do

Working through new business submissions sent in by brokers - checking what cover is being asked for, whether it fits your team's appetite (the types of risk your employer is willing to write), and chasing the broker for missing information such as claims history, survey reports or asset values
Entering risk details into pricing and rating models, running the numbers, and producing a draft price and set of terms for a senior underwriter to review and sign off
Preparing renewal files for existing policyholders: comparing this year's exposure against last year's, pulling claims data, and flagging accounts where the risk has changed materially
Drafting quotes, policy wordings and endorsements (formal changes to a policy mid-term), and making sure the final documentation matches what was actually agreed

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Sitting in on or taking broker meetings and calls - at Lloyd's this can mean time on 'the box' in the underwriting room, where brokers queue up to present risks face to face
Keeping the team's records clean: logging risks onto the system, chasing outstanding subjectivities (conditions a client must meet before cover is confirmed), and making sure regulatory and audit requirements are met
Producing portfolio reports - how much premium the team has written, loss ratios by class of business, which brokers are sending good business - for the class underwriter or head of department

How graduates get in

Insurance graduate schemes run by large composite insurers, Lloyd's syndicates and reinsurers - usually one to two years with rotations across underwriting, claims and sometimes actuarial or broking, and the most common structured route in
Direct entry straight into an assistant or junior underwriter post advertised by a single team - very common, especially in regional commercial insurance offices and at smaller specialist insurers and managing general agents (MGAs, which underwrite on behalf of an insurer using delegated authority)
Moving across internally from a related function - underwriting support, operations, claims handling or broking. This is an extremely common route and many underwriters did not start in underwriting
Starting at a broker first, learning how risks are presented and placed, then moving to the insurer side after a year or two. Brokers often recruit graduates in larger volumes than insurers do

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Summer internships or placement years with insurers and Lloyd's market firms, which often convert into graduate offers
Apprenticeship routes exist at several levels including degree apprenticeships in insurance - a realistic option if you are considering this before or instead of university, though less relevant if you already have a degree

What employers ask for

A degree in any subject is the usual starting point and the subject genuinely does not matter for most general and commercial lines. Economics, business, maths, law, geography and engineering all appear, but so do history and languages
Some specialisms do favour particular backgrounds: engineering or science for construction, energy, marine and property risks; maths or statistics for actuarially-flavoured pricing roles; law for liability and financial lines. This is a preference, not a bar
Grade requirements vary a lot. Larger graduate schemes often ask for a 2:1; many direct-entry assistant underwriter roles ask for a 2:2 or simply a degree, and regional employers are frequently more flexible
Progress towards the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) qualifications is usually expected rather than required on day one - the Certificate in Insurance (Cert CII) first, then the Diploma (Dip CII) and eventually the Advanced Diploma leading to Chartered Insurer status. Most employers pay exam fees and give study leave; some give paid study days, others expect evenings and weekends

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Solid Excel ability and comfort with numbers. You do not need to be a mathematician, but you will be manipulating spreadsheets of exposure and claims data constantly
Commercial awareness about insurance specifically - knowing roughly what the Lloyd's market is, what a broker does, what reinsurance is for. Interviewers notice when a candidate has not bothered to find out

Skills that matter

Numerical judgement rather than pure maths

You are constantly asking whether a price looks right given the exposure and claims history, and spotting when a model output does not pass the smell test.

Attention to detail in documentation

A wrong limit, date or excluded peril in a policy wording can cost an insurer a great deal when a claim comes in, and these errors are traced back to whoever drafted them.

Broker relationship management

Brokers choose which insurer to show a risk to first, so being quick, responsive and straightforward with them directly affects how much good business your team sees.

Saying no clearly and early

Declining a risk politely but firmly, and explaining why, saves everyone time and preserves the broker relationship far better than a vague drawn-out maybe.

Technical reading

You need to get through surveyors' reports, financial accounts, contract clauses and policy wordings and extract the two or three facts that change the pricing decision.

Workload triage

Submissions arrive faster than anyone can process them, especially at renewal season, so deciding what to work up properly and what to decline quickly is a core daily judgement.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Assistant or junior underwriter: no authority of your own, everything referred upward. Typically one to three years, though it depends heavily on how much business flows through your team and how quickly you clear CII exams.
Underwriter with delegated authority: you are given a written limit - types of risk, maximum sums insured, maximum premium - within which you can bind cover yourself without a referral. Getting this authority is the real milestone in an underwriting career, more so than any job title change.
Senior underwriter: larger authority, more complex and higher-value accounts, direct ownership of broker relationships, and often mentoring assistants beneath you.
Class underwriter or portfolio lead: responsible for the profitability of a whole line of business - setting appetite, agreeing the pricing approach, deciding where to grow and where to pull back.
From there the paths fork widely: underwriting management and eventually chief underwriting officer; or sideways into portfolio management, reinsurance, pricing, product development, or underwriting at a Lloyd's syndicate. Some move to the broking side, and some leave for an MGA to build a book from scratch. Timelines vary enormously and are driven as much by market cycles and vacancies above you as by individual performance.

What people get wrong

“Underwriting is a desk job filling in forms and ticking boxes against a rulebook.”

Low-value personal lines like motor and home are heavily automated and largely done by algorithms, so graduate underwriting jobs are concentrated in commercial and specialty risks where no two submissions are the same. Much of the job is judgement, negotiation and relationship work, and in the Lloyd's market it involves a lot of face-to-face trading with brokers.

“You need a maths or finance degree, and it is basically a junior actuarial role.”

Actuaries and underwriters are different jobs. Actuaries build the pricing models; underwriters decide whether to apply them, override them or walk away. Most underwriters have non-quantitative degrees and the arithmetic involved is well within reach of anyone comfortable with a spreadsheet.

“Insurance is a back-office function with no commercial pressure.”

An underwriting team has a premium target and a loss ratio it is judged on, and you can see in real time whether your account is making or losing money. It is a front-line, revenue-owning role, and underwriters are routinely taken out to lunch by brokers who want their business written.

“Once you are in, you stay in one niche forever.”

Underwriting skills travel well across classes and across the insurer, broker and MGA sides of the market. Moving between employers every few years is normal and often the fastest way to gain authority, particularly in the London market where people know each other across firms.

Where this varies

The biggest split is London market versus regional. In the Lloyd's and London company market you are likely to be in specialty lines - marine, aviation, energy, cyber, political risk, reinsurance - dealing with large international risks, with more face-to-face broker trading and a faster, more deal-driven culture. In regional offices around the UK you are more likely to be writing SME and mid-market commercial business - property, liability, fleet, package policies - with higher volumes, smaller individual risks and more of the work done by email and phone. Employer type matters too: a large composite insurer tends to have formal graduate schemes, structured authority levels and defined study support, whereas an MGA or small specialist insurer will often give you responsibility much faster but with far less structure and training around you. Personal lines underwriting (motor, home, travel) is largely automated and now sits closer to pricing and data analytics than to traditional risk-by-risk underwriting, so graduate roles there tend to be branded as pricing or portfolio analyst jobs instead.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.