New Business Underwriter - Sports Insurance

New Business Underwriter

About Players Health
At Players Health, we are on a mission to create the safest and most accessible environment for an athlete to play the sports that they love. There are over 50 million youth athletes playing sports in the U.S., and they are counting on us to ensure that the environment that they are coming into not only accepts them for who they are, but fills them with encouragement, love, and inspiration.   

We're a sports insurance and athlete safety platform, combining insurance expertise with technology to help organizations protect the athletes, coaches, and communities they serve. We're a fully remote, US-based team, backed by PE-investors, and growing quickly as we build the infrastructure this space has never had.

Our Core Values
We cannot achieve our mission without having a strong culture. We believe that at the core of a strong culture is a shared set of values. The values that we hold true and look for our employees to embrace are as follows:

• Lead with Mission: Our mission always comes first. If we stay on mission as an organization, then we believe we will be successful in our professional and personal lives.
• Go Beyond: We're not satisfied with just “good enough” – we go above and beyond to achieve awesome results that impress and inspire.
• Operate like Owners: We believe in operational excellence. We take ownership of our work and approach every task with a sense of pride, responsibility, and commitment to excellence. We don't just rent our roles – we own them and strive to make a lasting impact.
• Virtue First: From the big decisions to the small details; honesty, integrity, and transparency are the bedrock of our culture and the foundation for everything we do.
• Service: We live to serve others with humility, empathy, and kindness. We put our customers, colleagues and community first, and always strive to exceed their expectations with a smile.

About the Role
Every policy Players Health underwrites protects a sports organization — and the athletes in it. As an Underwriter on our Youth & Amateur Sports team, your risk decisions are the mechanism that makes that protection real: get it right, and organizations stay covered when it matters; get it wrong, and the mission doesn't hold up. You'll join a team navigating real growth and digital transformation, with ownership and accountability as the operating norm rather than the exception.

The Underwriter role is an individual contributor on a small, high-ownership underwriting team at a scaling sports insurance MGA. This role is a functional expert in risk assessment, pricing, and portfolio management for youth and amateur sports organizations, evaluating exposures no generic commercial underwriter would recognize, from abuse-prevention protocols to overnight-event risk. 

You'll bring underwriting expertise into the uniquely specific world of youth and amateur sports risk, applying it in an environment where the underwriting platform, workflows, and tooling being built to best serve brokers, carriers, and our underwriting team. This isn't a role where you inherit a fully mature system and maintain it. In addition to producing new business, you'll help test, validate, and shape the platform, having real influence in the underwriting platform we’re building. The ideal candidate is excited to leverage AI, automation and technology solutions to improve underwriting efficiency and consistency, without losing sight of when human judgment should override the machine.

You'll operate both hands-on and strategically — making independent underwriting decisions within your authority while partnering closely with Claims, Operations, and Technology to sharpen risk selection and improve the systems everyone relies on.

The ideal candidate has spent meaningful time in an MGA, wholesale, delegated-authority, or specialty insurance environment, and brings the mindset of a builder, someone who sees an undocumented process or a gap in the platform as an opportunity, not just a task. This role has a salary range of $90,000–$130,000, depending on skills and experience.

Perks, Benefits, & Culture

• Remote-First: Work from any approved location (home) in the U.S. (Preference to candidates in states which we already have employee presence, CT/ET time zone preferred)  
• Time Off: Flexible PTO policy, and 10 company-paid holidays  
• Benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, Life (Basic & Supplemental), LTD, STD, 401k, Hospital Confinement, Accident, Critical Illness, Enhanced Employee Assistance Program
• Professional Development & Tools: Access to The Institutes Knowledge Group platform for ongoing insurance education and continued professional development in the industry. Additionally, this role will have access to Claude AI.

Responsibilities (are inclusive of but not limited to):

• Actively drive new business growth for your assigned book — meeting and exceeding written premium, profitability, and retention goals through proactive pipeline generation, not just responsive underwriting.
• Analyze prospective risks and make independent underwriting decisions within your level of authority, in accordance with company guidelines, owning proper file documentation end-to-end.
• Maintain in-depth knowledge of sports & fitness segment products and services, including General Liability, SAM (Sexual Abuse & Molestation) Property, A&H, Excess, and D&O.
• Own and improve hit ratio and quote-to-bind conversion by balancing quoting speed and broker responsiveness with underwriting discipline, ensuring speed never comes at the expense of risk quality.
• Monitor portfolio performance by class, geography, limit profile, and loss trends, proactively recommending corrective actions — including underwriting guideline, pricing, or appetite changes — to improve profitability, retention, and growth.
• Assess and manage accumulation, aggregation, and catastrophe exposure across your portfolio.
• Evaluate risk characteristics, loss history, exposure data, and market/carrier requirements to determine appropriate pricing, terms, conditions, limits, deductibles, and coverage structure — recommending deviations and exceptions with documented underwriting rationale.
• Analyze coverage requests, manuscript endorsements, and broker-submitted modifications to ensure alignment with underwriting intent and carrier guidelines.
• Support carrier and capacity partner relationships by maintaining underwriting discipline, preparing portfolio insights, and participating in carrier reviews when needed.
• Ensure underwriting decisions align with carrier guidelines, authority agreements, and delegated underwriting responsibilities.
• Evaluate organizational governance, participant safety programs, background screening practices, abuse prevention protocols, facility exposures, event operations, coaching oversight, and risk management controls.
• Assess unique sports exposures including participant injury risk, contact level, travel activities, overnight events, spectator exposure, and facility operations.
• Review loss runs, claims trends, and historical performance — partnering with Claims to understand emerging loss patterns — to identify risk drivers and improve future risk selection.
• Demonstrate strong analytical and decision-making ability, working within broad limits and authority on complex assignments and policies for sports organizations.
• Clearly articulate the Players Health mission, value proposition, and risk appetite to brokers and agents.
• Participate in training and documentation initiatives to build the team's knowledge base.
• Own your results with unwavering personal standards focused on goals, skills, and career growth.
• Collaborate with management on risks exceeding your authority level or requiring special handling.
• Work collaboratively within Underwriting and cross-departmentally, proactively identifying ways to improve operations, process, and workflows – especially relevant as Players Health continues to build out and mature its operations.
• Demonstrate responsiveness and urgency with brokers and colleagues alike — extending the same responsiveness to internal requests from Claims, Operations, Legal, People and other departments as to brokers.
• Support continuous improvement of our underwriting technology — testing rules, workflows, automation, and edge cases before launch, adapting quickly as the platform matures, and partnering with Technology to identify, escalate, and resolve process or system gaps.
• Ensure accurate, complete data entry into underwriting systems to support downstream automation and reporting accuracy.
• Leverage underwriting technology, automation, and AI-enabled tools to improve efficiency, consistency, and risk assessment, while applying sound professional judgment to validate AI-assisted outputs and flag where human review should override automated recommendations.
• Maintain thorough working knowledge of underwriting principles, policies, procedures, and controls, along with policy forms, endorsements, exclusions, and coverage triggers, to ensure decisions align with risk appetite and program objectives.
• Create, run, and prepare reports for management, or as necessary for carriers, partners, leaders.
• Align with and embody our company core values — Lead with Mission, Go Beyond, Operate like Owners, Virtue First, and Service.
• Travel occasionally as needed for team collaboration, events, and client/carrier meetings.
• Participate in special projects as assigned.
• Other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

• 4+ years underwriting commercial P&C risks – including General Liability, Property, Excess/Umbrella, or similar specialized casualty lines – with the analytical foundation to translate that experience into sports and amateur athletics risk.
• Experience working within an MGA, wholesale, delegated authority, E&S, or specialty insurance environment preferred.
• Experience exercising underwriting authority and independently managing a profitable book of business.
• Experience utilizing underwriting, CRM, rating, policy administration, and reporting systems.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office/365 (including intermediate Excel skills to analyze data) and comfortable learning and adopting new technology, including AI-driven tools.
• Ability to sustain high performance in a fully remote role — not just tolerating remote work, but demonstrating the self-management, prioritization of projects/responsibilities, written communication, and proactive visibility that make remote collaboration effective.
• Motivated by mission-driven work — wants to see the direct line between their underwriting decisions and safer outcomes for athletes and organizations.
• Ability to interpret loss ratio, combined ratio, retention, hit ratio, and other underwriting performance metrics.
• Able to identify nuanced exposures and recognize emerging risks not immediately apparent from submissions.
• Operates with an ownership mentality and accepts accountability for underwriting outcomes.
• Demonstrated, proactive verbal and written communication skills.
• Demonstrated interpersonal, negotiation, and conflict resolution skills.
• Demonstrated organizational skills and attention to detail and accuracy.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to act with integrity, professionalism, and confidentiality.
  

Desired Characteristics

• 3+ years of experience in sports-specific insurance.
• Preferred: CPCU, AU, ARM, CRIS, or other relevant insurance designation.
• Enjoys building and improving processes, systems, and underwriting practices in a growth-stage environment.
• Balances growth, mission, and profitability through sound business judgment and disciplined underwriting decision-making.
• Experience working on a distributed team with no physical office, relying on asynchronous work, written documentation, and virtual meetings to stay aligned and effective.
• Demonstrates intellectual curiosity and seeks to understand the operational realities behind every risk.
• Experience underwriting youth sports, amateur sports, recreation, fitness facilities, camps, clinics, events, or related organizations preferred.
• Strong understanding of abuse prevention practices, participant safety protocols, coach screening requirements, and sports risk management principles preferred.
• Self-motivated and able to thrive in a remote, fast-paced, quickly changing environment.
• Strong emotional intelligence skills.
• Demonstrated experience and/or ability to influence without authority.
• Demonstrated ability to build connections and rapport cross-departmentally.
• Prior experience as a coach, athletic administrator, official, league/club operator, or athlete in youth or amateur sports, or a close connection to that world (e.g., parent of a competitive athlete), bringing firsthand understanding of how these organizations operate.

Additional Requirements

• Ability to travel occasionally for team events, collaboration, or conferences.
• Must have a dedicated, safe, and secure remote work environment.
• Must have the ability to work and be productive in a remote setting.
• Exceptionally self-motivated with the ability to work autonomously.
• Proactive communicator across email, verbal, and instant messaging.
• Willingness to attend virtual meetings, primarily with camera on (we value connection and culture).
• Located in or willing to work Central or Eastern Time Zone.
• Must be 18 years or older and work location must be in the United States.
• Must have unrestricted work authorization to work in the United States.

Players Health is committed to building a diverse and inclusive work environment. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and welcome all applicants regardless of race, color, religion, creed, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, gender identity, national origin or ancestry, age, citizenship, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law.