How Many Jobs are Available in Life Insurance
How Many Jobs are Available in Life Insurance: Life insurance is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer or assurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death of an insured person. Depending on the contract, other events such as terminal or critical illness can trigger payment. The insurance industry employs about 2.6 million people in the U.S. That number grows more when you include people in insurance functions who work at non-insurance companies. If you’re looking for information on insurance career paths and entry-level job opportunities, here’s a breakdown of the career roles in the insurance industry.
How Many Jobs are Available in Life Insurance
How Many Jobs are Available in Life Insurance
Consulting Actuary
A consulting actuary provides estimation and risk-assessment advice to clients. As a consulting actuary, you either work as part of a large consulting agency or freelancer. Your duties are to collect and analyze data and provide a solution to the company or client you are consulting. Qualifications for a career as a consulting actuary include several years of experience in the actuarial field and skills related to performing financial audits and risk modeling. If you have a job as a freelance consulting actuary, you will need to be comfortable seeking new clients.
Responsibilities
- Developing and testing hypotheses about company risk factors
- Gathering data and analyzing patterns
- Assessing the likelihood of different events occurring and predicting the possible impact
- Researching common and uncommon risk factors in different industries
- Auditing company policies to determine how they influence productivity
- Brainstorming solutions for managing financial risks
- Filling out and updating risk registers for individual projects
- Justifying their predictions based on market trends and risk assessment theory
- Creating charts and tables to explain complex statistics and concepts to shareholders and company management
Salary: $142,111 yearly
Insurance claim clerk
A claims clerk is an expert who reviews insurance claim forms and documents for absoluteness and precision. Their objective is to settle a claim with an insurance provider and submit amounts for payment. Claims clerks also perform clerical work and aid the claims personnel team.
Responsibilities
- Maintaining and updating financial records
- Offering customer help and answering inquiries
- Paying small claims
- Calculating the amount of a claim
- Applying insurance rating systems to determine the strength of an insurance agency
- Posting or attaching information with a claim file
- Contacting the insured individual or others involved in getting information
- Entering and retrieving claims information from a database system
Salary: $64,460
Final Expense Agent
As a final expense agent, your job is to sell life insurance products that cover the dead’s legal, funeral, and immediate household costs. To get these sales, you pursue leads, contact new clients, calculate expected costs in a region, and coordinate with the agency marketers. Final expense agents also spend time researching the market, studying the available plans, and determining which methods are most likely to appeal to a specific client. Most buyers are 55 or older.
Responsibilities
- Calculate dividends and create payment methods.
- Establish a collaborative relationship with prospective clients through networking, cold calling, and referrals.
- Distribute policy proceeds after a claim is submitted and approved.
- Recommend risk management strategies that fit the client’s risk profiles.
- Prepare and present detailed reports on the progress of initiatives to management.
- Track insurance claims to ensure client and company satisfaction.
- Describe the advantages and disadvantages of different policies to promote the sale of insurance plans.
- Create and implement marketing strategies to compete with other individuals or insurance companies.
- Respond to the clients’ insurance-related questions and issues.
Salary: $106,428
Underwriting Manager
Underwriting managers work in the financial and insurance industries to provide for all underwriting activities, including loan applications and insurance products. They oversee a team of associate-level staff, assigning them insurance or loan plans to evaluate and underwrite, ensuring that they comprehend expectations and timelines, and provide support by answering questions. They are team leaders, leading associate-level underwriter’s activities, supporting risk management, and financial due diligence activities. In addition, underwriting managers also play a significant role in developing and enacting policies and procedures in regional offices.
Responsibilities
- Review and verify loan applications and supporting documentation
- Define the terms and conditions of the insurance coverage and the premium
- Review loan documentation and vendor reports identifying signs of fraudulent activity
- Re-assess risk when policies come up for renewal
- Make loan eligibility decisions and approve or reject applications
- Communicate with loan officers and management to maintain a case-by-case follow-up for potential clients
- Request additional information beyond the application to ensure thorough and accurate evaluations (when necessary)
- Offer recommendations on whether or not to approve an application
- Analyze loan risk
- Review or renew applications for insurance coverage
Salary: $103,194
Insurance Manager
Every insurance manager has been through the paces, having climbed up the ranks over the years. They have used their best possible marketing skills to sell all sorts of policies, processed claims, participated in arbitration of claims, and executed many other hands-on tasks. As an insurance manager, you play a supervisory role, which means you are responsible for your company’s branch office. This means discharging administrative, operational, consulting, mentoring, and personnel-related duties, as well as meeting the targets set for your branch. But the top priority always remains – the sale of insurance policies.
Responsibilities
- manage the maintenance, development, performance, governance, administration, and delivery insurance providers for the organization to produce an efficient service and delivery solution, maximizing efficiency, performance, and best value against pre-agreed targets.
- ensuring that the insurance team understands its duties and its role within the organization
- responsibility to adhere to agreed criteria and budgets and plan to maximize efficiency, best value, and performance
- meet your targets and those of the team and organization as a whole
- the smooth running of the team and organization as a whole
- contribute to training and development of the team and organization as a whole
- assist Line Manager in achieving maximum customer satisfaction by organization plans
- maintain responsibility for performing all duties in compliance with related legal, regulations, professional standards, responsibilities, and obligations and insert as applicable
Salary: $73,294
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insurance field inspector
A field inspector gathers information and performs property value appraisals of residential and commercial properties and vehicles. As a field inspector, your job duties are to visually inspect a property, take photographs, collect data, and compile a report with a property value estimate based on your findings. Your responsibilities are also to evaluate property values or the cost of damages for your employer. You can find field inspector jobs with insurance companies, mortgage lenders, and banks with a financial stake in a piece of property.
Responsibilities
- Investigating claims made by policyholders for losses due to fire, theft, natural disasters, or other covered events
- Examining claims for coverage under insurance policies includes automobile liability, homeowners insurance, or life insurance
- Investigating claims of fraud or other criminal activities in connection with insurance claims
- Interviewing witnesses and collecting evidence to establish fault in an accident or negligence in a breach of contract case
- Investigate accidents, fires, or other claims to determine liability and coverage amounts
- Reviewing insurance policies to ensure compliance with state laws and regulations
- Reviewing and approving claims for coverage according to state laws and regulations
- Reviewing insurance company accounts to ensure compliance with state laws regarding minimum capital requirements, financial reporting standards, etc.
Salary: $121,000
Risk manager
As a risk manager, you will be responsible for managing the risk to an organization, its employees, customers, reputation, assets, and interests of stakeholders. Risk managers identify and assess threats to an organization, put plans in place for if things go wrong, and decide how to avoid, reduce or transfer risk.
Responsibilities
- plan, design, and implement an overall risk management process for the organization
- make risk assessments, which involve analyzing risks as well as identifying, describing, and estimating the risks affecting the business
- evaluate risk, which concerns comparing risks with criteria established by the organization such as costs, legal requirements, and environmental factors, and consider the previous handling of risks
- report risk in an appropriate way for different audiences, for example, to the board of directors so they understand the most significant risks, to business heads to ensure they are aware of risks relevant to their parts of the business, and to individuals to understand their accountability for individual risks
- undertake corporate governance involving external risk reporting to stakeholders
- carry out processes such as purchasing insurance, implementing health and safety measures, and making business continuity plans to limit risks and prepare for if things go wrong
- conduct audits of policy and compliance to standards, including liaison with internal and external auditors
- provide support, education, and training to staff to build risk awareness within the organization.
Salary: $70,000
loss control consultant
Loss control consultants are tasked with interpreting and helping mitigate risk in industrial and commercial settings. They recommend and create solutions for insurance companies to offer cost-effective coverage.
These consultants work for a wide variety of companies, from private agencies, and insurance companies, or consulting firms. They create and maintain channels of communication with professionals within the network, and stay apprised of pertinent changes in the field. Identifying points of highest risk, and providing cost-effective solutions is the primary goal of this position.
Responsibilities
- Inspecting facilities, factories and equipment for potential safety concerns
- Researching a company’s financial information and potential sources of loss
- Consulting work and fire safety regulations to determine safety requirements
- Enforcing quality assurance practices
- Analyzing the risk of particular procedures, facilities or pieces of equipment
- Giving suggestions to a company for how to improve safety and reduce loss