Nationwide Insurance’s commercial strategy is to profitably grow in alignment with the priorities of Distribution, Talent, and Capabilities. The Commercial Staff Underwriting Training Department developed two programs to specifically align with the strategic priority to develop underwriting talent: School of Commercial Underwriting (SCU) and Intermediate Underwriting Series (IUS).
School of Commercial Underwriting (SCU)
SCU is a six-month training program designed for new commercial underwriters with no prior insurance experience. It includes 14 technical units and a Professionalism Week. The technical units are conducted in regional offices and are facilitated by the regional trainer. The Professionalism Week is conducted as a large group in a centralized location.
Learners are actively involved through group discussions and activities. The activities are designed to emulate real-life underwriter experiences and include case studies, role-plays, agency visits, and field trips to local businesses to apply knowledge to real-life situations.
SCU focuses on the following learner outcomes:
- Competence
- Confidence
- Critical Thinking
- Connections
- Culture
- Communication
- Career
The third session of SCU included Allied, Nationwide, and Harleysville participants during the Professionalism Week. This was a major first step toward the long-term goal to include all business units in SCU.
Feedback from managers of SCU graduates once they are assigned an underwriting territory is that they have the confidence of a two- to three-year underwriter.
Intermediate Underwriting Series (IUS)
The Intermediate Underwriting Series is a collaborative learning model utilizing case studies and engaged learner training methods with a goal to strengthen commercial underwriting talent on more complex risks. The case studies are developed in partnership with business units across the enterprise that sell and service commercial insurance.
The first case studies were developed for Auto. Future builds in IUS will include even more complex, multi-line cases.
Each business unit designated underwriters to be its local IUS facilitators. Their role is to lead small group discussions around the case studies and incorporate engaged learner activities. To better prepare local facilitators, they attended an Engaged Learner Conference, where they completed a facilitation skills workshop and practiced the skills with IUS case studies.
Sessions now are actively conducted in each region with recommended delivery of one per quarter.
- 85.6 percent of participants indicate the workshop will help improve performance.
- 84.8 percent gained new knowledge and skills.
- 84.7 percent view the sessions as a valuable career investment.
Results
Since implementing SCU and IUS, commercial profitability has trended favorably at an accelerated pace. Through August 2013, Nationwide experienced an underwriting profit evidenced by a Trade Combined Ratio under 100 (98.9 percent in 2013 vs. 107.2 percent in 2012).
