What even is this role? Why am I helping a new staffer understand what a named peril is? I thought I was an underwriter not a baby sitter. They didn’t mention this in training. Is production a better fit if I came from a high networth team?
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Many of us agents were underwriters and claim reps. We get it. All of it.
Agents use UW aliases as crutches to not knowing how to do the job, and use it if something goes wrong. When I was in PLCC, I had a lot of calls pulled by my manager for a complaint, and it turns out I gave the right info, and Agent Staff didnt retain any of it, and still would report me for bad info. Was pretty frequent. So no, maybe they are not trying to get me fired, but it was still horrible, and most acted like the customer the SECOND you told them something that would result in loss of commission or a negative convo.
Sure there are good agents and staff out there, but same with customers, and just like customers, they act like absolute karens the second they have to do something they dont want to do. I dont think any of them understood what underwriting really does, or why we did "mean" things. Someone has to look out for the business.
Agents and staff don’t want to get you fired. They just want to stop getting yelled at by the customer when the way something is handled is completely different from the way they were told it would be handled. If the manuals you want to refer us to are so helpful and accurate, why is it that no two people interpret them the same way? It really pi---s off customers…. and they have been trained to attack agents and staff over every little thing.
No way is AI replacing call point for an under trained staff member asking if a customer can insure an odd vehicle or non private passenger car with complex scenarios. Yes 90% of UW work is just reading resources to ungrateful staff uninterested in learning, just give me my answer, and your alias so i can get you fired if it doesnt work out.
Its odd to me that agents dont understand they need to tell us what to do with policy as a rep for the customer, so many assume we can just look over here and assume, or make updates without being told.... and then get snarky that we cant do logical stuff....like learn the industry please.
PLCC kinda su-ks. You cant really do anything for the agents or staff, another team with no phone does this. They delete with no work about half the requests that come in. PLCC is basically getting screamed at for issues from this team, having people trying to "gotcha" you on complicated questions so they can report you to your manager, and clueless staff who would rather wait on hold 45min than look up their answer in the same resource PLCC uses.
The department itself is more like express, where the only thing that matters is how fast you take calls, and you get dinged for helping too long, no consideration for agents calling in for 5 households, or sharing you with others in the office. It seems a tamer environment than claims but your still stressing metrics out of your control, or metrics that ask you to ignore quality in favor of speed, even if that causes more work downstream.
I would compare all the UW roles to express and ailr, you do get paid more, but its all quantity over quality back to back phone calls "let me speak to your manager" and "i dont know how to do the basic functions of my job can you help me" mixed in with old school agents who are just so nasty and toxic you just dont want to even help them.
You dont deal with customers, but the agents and staff act no different to you, and know how to get you fired. They all will if you dont give them the answer they want (which isnt the correct answer).
Having to babysit AO staff is probably the best form of job security in Underwriting though. Or being on a complaint team.
Underwriting is a huge mess, not as chaotic as claims, but an absolute disaster. It can take over a month to do a simple name change or vehicle swap, and there is like a 50% chance it will be done wrong or, this is the best part of underwriting, they can just delete the ticket and not do the work, let the agent call in two months later when the angry customer learns their request was never done. Then PLCC underwriters get to tell the agent that they will send another ticket and it will get done in maybe another month.
This is for simple stuff.
Underwriting is saddled with horrificly dated technology that just doesnt work.
Now mix this with agent staff members who would rather wait on hold 45min to ask a question that an underwriter will read the answer to from the shared resource the agent has access too. This is underwriting. PLCC phones will spend 90% of their day babysitting undertrained staff who are too lazy to look up an answer, the other 10% getting screamed at because something they cant fix didnt get fixed.
Its marginally better than claims for what its worth, though I hear they are changing UW for the worse.
Three areas of State Farm that are absolute nightmares to work for: Claims, Underwriting, Agency. Our core business function is a nightmare, think about that....why is this ok for the board of directors?
we ALL hold our breath then shudder if we get a six digit alias in PLCC.
I work in SFPP. Some of ours aren’t great either but holy cow have I had some really ridiculous conversations with PLCC.
Its suppose to be underwriting, but its not, its a back to back call center for agent staff who dont know their job and act just like a customer would....aka "let me speak to your manager" every time you have to tell them something unpleasant, which is everything revolving around their commission being ruined by a cancellation or eligibility issue, or even just an inflation rate increase.
@2vlg…..How would an agent being “on top of their customers” change the fact that Auto Underwriting doesn’t look at its own records, but asks somebody else to tell them what’s in there?
None of that would happen if agents were on top of their customers.
Agent (and former underwriter) here. Today I had to submit a NECHO Pt on a State to State auto to explain a 3/29/23 accident. It was a State Farm claim. I am told “it’s not our procedure to review that”. So we send the policyholder a cancellation letter and make the agent give underwriting the information on the underwriting screen because underwriting doesn’t review that.
We truly are doomed by our own stupidity.
All of underwriting has a lot of explaining the basics to undertrained agent staff. That part is job security.
In production, you just do most of it through email instead.
Better start looking for another job. I believe AI will replace underwriting in the coming years.