Underwriter for Directors and Officers Liability, Zurich

Kellen, an underwriter at Zurich North America, sits down and gives us an in-depth look at insurance underwriting as well as what it’s like living in NYC with a portfolio of west-coast clients.

Transcript

>> I'm Colin Doherty [assumed spelling]. I live and work in New York. I work for Zurich, North America, and I work as an Underwriter for Directors and Officers Liability. Basically you're charged with trying to assess a company's risk, and that can mean everything from what's happening in the broader economy right now at a macro-level to, you know, what are the proper controls and the personnel involved at a corporate level that can help a company mitigate risk? At the same time, we go through public filings, look at a company's financials, make sure that they're performing well. So it's really kind of a perfect combination of research, reading, discussion at a team basis and keeping up with what's going on in the world. So I get in about 7:45 in the morning, and I spend the first 45 minutes kind of reading up on the news, catching up on what I might have missed in the last 12 hours or so, kind of making sure that there's nothing crazy that blew up while we were gone, and nothing that needs to be imminently addressed and make sure we're well-informed, going into the workday. I actually work on West Coast clients, which means I have a three-hour advantage every day, when I get in. So I can spend the first few hours of my morning just kind of not being bothered, being able to go right to our research reports and making sure that I kind of can get focused in. For us, we deal with insurance brokers. They're trying to place the coverage for their clients. That often involves lengthy negotiations, whether it's coverage-based or premium-based. And so there's a high degree of back and forth. And so that's kind of -- tilts more towards my afternoon, given the fact that I work on West Coast clients. So there's not too much heavy-hitting stuff that has to be done after the closure of normal business hours. You do still -- I do still find myself checking my Blackberry, responding to emails, you know, well into the evening. But fortunately, in terms of major documents, major reports that have to get out, quotes for insurance programs -- they pretty much know that, you know, that there's a chance you could at dinner. You could be on a drive. You could be out of touch for a few hours. And I think that's -- one of the good things about my job is that there's a little bit of a balance with the expectation that you're going to have a little more to life than just the working world.

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