Insurance Underwriting and Risk Selection Training Course

Course overview

Insurance underwriting decisions must balance growth targets, pricing discipline, regulatory requirements, and the insurer’s appetite for retained risk. Underwriters need to assess incomplete proposal information, distinguish material facts from non-material detail, apply rating guidance consistently, and document decisions that can withstand audit, claims review, and broker challenge. This course develops the judgement and workflow discipline needed to select, price, refer, accept, amend, or decline risks with clear commercial rationale.

Participants work through the full underwriting cycle: interpreting risk appetite and underwriting authority, gathering and validating exposure data, analysing hazard and loss information, using rating factors, applying deductibles and coverage conditions, and identifying cases that require referral. The course covers risk classification, proposal-form review, accumulations, adverse selection, moral hazard, claims-history analysis, policy wording considerations, and file documentation. Participants also practise communicating terms, exclusions, subjectivities, and declinatures clearly to brokers, clients, and internal stakeholders.

Delivered over five instructor-led days in the classroom or live online, the programme combines technical briefings with realistic commercial-lines case files, rating exercises, peer review, and underwriting committee simulations. Participants use structured underwriting checklists, risk assessment matrices, referral templates, and Microsoft Excel-based rating models. They leave with a completed underwriting case portfolio containing a risk assessment, pricing recommendation, terms schedule, referral note, and defensible underwriting rationale that can be adapted for workplace use.

The course is designed for foundation-to-intermediate underwriting professionals, including those moving from policy administration, broking, claims, or customer-facing insurance roles into risk selection responsibilities. It is equally relevant to managers who need more consistent decisions, stronger underwriting controls, and clearer evidence behind accepted risks.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Evaluate proposal-form information using a structured risk assessment checklist
• Classify insurance exposures against risk appetite, underwriting authority, and acceptance criteria
• Calculate technical premiums using rating factors, exposure measures, loadings, and deductibles
• Analyse claims histories to identify frequency, severity, trend, and recurrence indicators
• Apply coverage conditions, exclusions, warranties, and subjectivities to control identified exposures
• Prepare a documented referral submission for risks exceeding delegated underwriting authority
• Draft clear quotation, declinature, and amended-terms communications for brokers and clients
• Produce a defensible underwriting file containing risk rationale, pricing basis, terms, and audit trail

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Insurance Underwriters — who assess submissions and need consistent risk selection and pricing decisions
• Assistant Underwriters — who support case preparation, data validation, quotations, and referrals
• Underwriting Analysts — who analyse portfolio and risk data to support acceptance and pricing decisions
• Underwriting Team Leaders — who supervise delegated authority and need stronger file quality controls
• Insurance Brokers — who prepare submissions and need to understand insurer risk-selection requirements
• Claims and Policy Administration Professionals — who are moving into underwriting or risk assessment roles

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course. Participants should understand basic insurance terms such as premium, policy, sum insured, deductible or excess, exclusion, endorsement, and claims history. Experience in underwriting, broking, policy administration, claims, sales support, or insurance operations is useful but not essential. Participants should be comfortable reading tables and performing straightforward percentage and ratio calculations; basic Microsoft Excel familiarity is helpful for rating exercises. No actuarial qualification, advanced financial modelling, coding, or prior knowledge of IFRS 17 is required. Complete beginners should expect a practical introduction to insurance risk assessment before progressing to structured case decisions.

Training methodology

The instructor uses short technical briefings to establish underwriting principles, followed by guided analysis of proposal forms, claims records, inspection reports, and broker submissions. Participants complete individual rating calculations in Microsoft Excel, compare acceptance decisions in small groups, and defend recommendations in simulated referral and underwriting committee discussions. Cases progress from straightforward risks to incomplete and adverse submissions, requiring participants to identify missing information and propose controls. The final session converts learning into an individual application plan for improving a live underwriting workflow, template, or quality-control step.

Course outline

Day 1: Underwriting foundations and risk appetite

• The underwriting cycle from submission receipt to policy issuance
• Insurable interest, utmost good faith, disclosure, and material facts
• Risk appetite statements and underwriting authority limits
• Risk classification by class of business, occupancy, activity, and exposure
• Hazard identification: physical, moral, morale, legal, and financial hazards
• Proposal-form completeness checks and missing-information requests
• Underwriting file standards, decision rationale, and audit trails

Workshop: Participants review a commercial insurance proposal file, identify material information gaps, and produce an acceptance, referral, or decline recommendation.

Day 2: Exposure analysis and technical pricing

• Exposure measures: turnover, payroll, sums insured, units, and locations
• Rating factors, base rates, relativities, and premium adequacy
• Technical premium calculation using loadings and discounts
• Deductibles, excesses, limits, sublimits, and their pricing impact
• Claims frequency, severity, loss ratios, and incurred-but-not-reported considerations
• Experience rating and claims-history adjustments
• Microsoft Excel rating worksheets and calculation controls

Workshop: Participants build a rating worksheet for a multi-factor risk and produce a technical premium recommendation with documented assumptions.

Day 3: Terms, conditions, and risk controls

• Policy wording structure: insuring clauses, definitions, exclusions, and conditions
• Using warranties, endorsements, and subjectivities to manage exposure
• Risk surveys, inspection reports, and engineering recommendations
• Aggregation and accumulation risk across sites, products, and insureds
• Reinsurance considerations and retention thresholds
• Adverse selection indicators and anti-selection controls
• Negotiating amended terms without weakening underwriting discipline

Workshop: Participants convert survey findings into a terms schedule containing conditions, exclusions, deductibles, and risk-improvement requirements.

Day 4: Referral, governance, and underwriting judgement

• Delegated authority matrices and mandatory referral triggers
• Preparing concise referral memoranda for senior underwriters
• Balancing portfolio strategy, capacity, profitability, and broker relationships
• Underwriting governance, peer review, and quality assurance sampling
• Managing exceptions to appetite and documenting compensating controls
• Regulatory conduct considerations and fair customer outcomes
• Communicating declinatures, non-renewals, and restrictive terms professionally

Workshop: Participants present a borderline risk to a simulated underwriting committee and produce a referral memo recording the final decision.

Day 5: Integrated casework and workplace application

• End-to-end assessment of a complex commercial-lines submission
• Triangulating proposal data, claims experience, financial information, and risk surveys
• Pricing scenarios and sensitivity testing for deductible and coverage options
• Accept, amend, refer, and decline decision frameworks
• Quotation documentation and broker communication standards
• Portfolio monitoring metrics: hit rate, loss ratio, referral rate, and exception rate
• Personal underwriting quality-control and application planning

Workshop: Participants complete and defend a full underwriting case portfolio containing a risk assessment, pricing model, terms schedule, referral note, and action plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, ISO 31000, IFRS 17, ACORD Standards

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions