Underwriting Governance & Rule Specialist - Hybrid

About Us

At Selective, we don't just insure uniquely, we employ uniqueness.Selective is a midsized U.S. domestic property and casualty insurance company with a history of strong, consistent financial performance for nearly 100 years. Selective's unique position as both a leading insurance group and an employer of choice is recognized in a wide variety of awards and honors, including listing in Forbes Best Midsize Employers in 2025 and certification as a Great Place to Work® in 2025 for the sixth consecutive year.Employees are empowered and encouraged to Be Uniquely You by being their true, unique selves and contributing their diverse talents, experiences, and perspectives to our shared success. Together, we are a high-performing team working to serve our customers responsibly by helping to mitigate loss, keep them safe, and restore their lives and businesses after an insured loss occurs.

Overview

Owns the strategic design, implementation, and enterprise-wide management of the governance framework that ensures CL underwriting guidelines remain current, consistent, accessible, and authoritative across every channel of consumption including human underwriters, automated decision / referral systems, and Al-powered tools. Serves as the definitive steward of guideline integrity, responsible for establishing and enforcing the governance standards, processes, and compliance systems that keep the organization's underwriting knowledge base accurate and aligned at scale. Serves as the enterprise resource for matters related to underwriting letter of authority (LOA) grants, rules, and supporting automation. Acts as the central point of coordination between field underwriters, UW Practices, QA, Operations, Training, IT , Product, and administrative staff to ensure the authority framework is accurately documented, properly delegated, and effectively automated.

This role is foundational to Selective's ability to build and deploy reliable automation and AI tools; without a disciplined, well-governed source of truth, automated and Al-driven underwriting capabilities cannot function with confidence. Defines how guidelines are created, reviewed, approved, published, versioned, archived, and retired. Establishes and enforces clarity and accessibility standards so that reference material is easily written, consistently structured, and reliably interpreted by both people and technology.

Ensures all guideline content is refreshed within established currency standards, that historical changes are fully traceable, and that downstream dependencies - learning content, curricula, automated rules, and AI models are systematically synchronized with every guideline change. Works autonomously and cross-functionally with Underwriting Practices, QA, Underwriting Learning & Enablement, IT, Product, and Operations to monitor adherence, surface gaps, and drive resolution. Builds, maintains, and trains the organization on the compliance systems that make the governance framework operational at enterprise scale.

Responsibilities

• Governance Framework Design & Ownership: Designs, documents, and owns the governance structure that pertains to how underwriting guidelines arc created, reviewed, updated, approved, published, and retired. Defines governance standards including review cycles, approval workflows, ownership assignments, escalation paths, and quality benchmarks. Continuously evaluates and evolves the framework to anticipate organizational, regulatory and technology -driven changes.
• Source of Truth Stewardship: Serves as the authoritative steward of the single enterprise source of truth for all underwriting guidelines. Ensures every guideline has a clearly identified owner, a defined review cycle, a current effective date, and a documented chain of custody. Maintains the master inventory of all guidelines actively manages their status, currency, and alignment across all downstream systems, content, and tools. This function is critical to enabling trustworthy technology tools.
• Guideline Currency & Refresh Governance: Establishes and enforces the currency standard requiring all reference material to be reviewed and refreshed within a 5-year cycle or sooner as business conditions warrant. Proactively identifies guidelines approaching expiration, drives the review process with LOB Technical and ensures updated content is published, distributed, and propagated to all dependent systems and content. Owns the escalation ss when currency deadlines are at risk
• Clarity, Accessibility & Structural Standards: Defines and enforces standards for how lines are organized, and structured ensuring reference material is clear, concise, logically organized, and reliably interpretable by underwriters, automated systems, and Al tools alike. Partners with Underwriting Practices to translate deep subject matter expertise into well-structured, accessible guideline documentation. Establishes templates, style guides, and quality criteria that enable consistency across all lines of business.
• Learning Content & Curricula Synchronization: Establishes the governance linkage between guidelines and training content. When guidelines are updated, triggers and oversees the corresponding review and update of learning materials and curricula in partnership with Underwriting Learning & Enablement. Monitors alignment between what is taught and what is published and escalates misalignment for resolution.
• Automated Rules Alignment including LOA Administration & Documentation: Ensures all automated referral rules, decision rules, and system controls remain in precise alignment with the guideline source of truth. Works with Corporate UW, Regional leaders and administrative teams to confirm letters of authority are accurately drafted, executed, maintained, and accessible. Maintains an up-to-date inventory of authority grants across the enterprise. Tracks changes, expirations, and adjustments to ensure the authority framework is current and complete. Serves as the go-to resource for all regional leadership on questions related to authority grants, authority rules, referral requirements, and the automation supporting the LOA framework. Provides clear, timely guidance to ensure underwriters understand their authority levels and how to operate within them. Supports hiring managers in the delegation of underwriting authority to new underwriters. Assists in evaluating appropriate authority levels for new hires and role changes, ensures proper documentation, and coordinates administrative staff to get new letters of authority executed and distributed. Partners with the IT, and Product teams to verify that every guideline change is reflected in the corresponding automated rule sets. Maintains a crosswalk between guidelines and their automated implementations.
• AI & Technology Alignment: Serves as the governance checkpoint ensuring AI tools, decision-support systems, and any technology consuming guideline content are operating from accurate, current, and authorized reference material. Reviews feedback from users connected to underwriting guidelines and reference material to see if changes are warranted.
• Historical Archive, Versioning & Traceability: Designs and maintains the enterprise archival and version control process for all underwriting guidelines. Ensures all changes are fully documented, versioned, and traceable supporting audit, compliance, regulatory inquiry, claims support, and institutional knowledge needs. Ensures prior versions remain accessible and that the relationship between historical guidelines and the decisions made under them is preservable.
• Compliance System Design, Build & Training: Designs, builds, maintains, and continuously improves the compliance system including processes, tools, workflows, and tracking mechanisms — that operationalizes the governance framework at enterprise scale. Trains stakeholders across the organization on how the governance system works, their responsibilities within it, and how to maintain compliance with governance standards. Ensures the system supports both the flexibility needed for guideline evolution and the consistency required for enterprise-wide integrity.
• Adherence Monitoring, Gap Identification & Enterprise Reporting: Monitors adherence to the governance structure across underwriting. Proactively identifies gaps, inconsistencies, and areas of non-compliance whether in guideline currency, content alignment, automation synchronization, AI input accuracy, or process execution. Surfaces concerns to appropriate stakeholders and drives cross-functional resolution. Develops and reports governance health metrics, providing visibility into the state of the enterprise knowledge base and its readiness to automation and AI initiatives.

Qualifications

Knowledge

• Deep understanding of commercial lines underwriting guidelines, processes, and operating frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, and managing governance frameworks, compliance systems, or enterprise content/knowledge management programs.
• Strong understanding of how underwriting guidelines are consumed across multiple channels human users, automated decision systems, AI tools and the governance implications of each.
• Ability to design structured governance processes that balance flexibility with consistency at enterprise scale.
• Excellent documentation, writing, and editing skills ability to establish and enforce clarity and structural standards for technical content.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to monitor, measure, and report on governance health metrics.
• Proven cross-functional leadership skills — ability to drive alignment and resolution across LOB Technical, QA, Training, IT, Product, and Operations without direct authority.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to manage a large, complex inventory of guidelines and their downstream dependencies simultaneously.
• Ability to train and influence stakeholders at all levels on governance processes and compliance expectations.
• Forward- thinking orientation toward automation and AI understands why source- of-truth integrity is foundational to technology-driven underwriting.
• Demonstrated proficiency in content management, workflow and tracking tools.

Education

• College degree preferred
• 10+ years of experience in underwriting, underwriting operations, compliance, governance, or content/knowledge management within insurance
• 5+ years of experience designing or managing governance frameworks, compliance systems, or enterprise content management processes
• Experience working with automated underwriting rules, AI tools, or technology-driven workflows strongly preferred
• CPCU, AU or other relevant professional designations preferred

Total Rewards

Selective Insurance offers a total rewards package that includes a competitive base salary, incentive plan eligibility at all levels, and a wide array of benefits designed to help you and your family stay healthy, achieve your financial goals, and balance the demands of your work and personal life. These benefits include comprehensive health care plans, retirement savings plan with company match, discounted Employee Stock Purchase Program, tuition assistance and reimbursement programs, and 20 days of paid time off. Additional details about our total rewards package can be found by visiting our benefits page.

The actual base salary is based on geographic location, and the range is representative of salaries for this role throughout Selective's footprint. Additional considerations include relevant education, qualifications, experience, skills, performance, and business needs.

Pay Range

USD $155,000.00 - USD $201,000.00 /Yr.

Additional Information

Selective is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. That means we respect and value every individual’s unique opinions, beliefs, abilities, and perspectives. We are committed to promoting a welcoming culture that celebrates diverse talent, individual identity, different points of view and experiences – and empowers employees to contribute new ideas that support our continued and growing success. Building a highly engaged team is one of our core strategic imperatives, which we believe is enhanced by diversity, equity, and inclusion. We expect and encourage all employees and all of our business partners to embrace, practice, and monitor the attitudes, values, and goals of acceptance; address biases; and foster diversity of viewpoints and opinions.

For Massachusetts Applicants

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.