A large company with a lot of moving parts daily. I found the training culture to be very lacking and strong management lacked in certain departments.

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Great work life balance

Underwriting (Current Employee) - Texas - 7 March 2022

Good work life balance. Day to day task manageable. More training in new software is preferred. Compensation is average. Hard to advance to other roles.

Pros

Work life balance

Cons

Compensation

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Balance between personal and professional life.

Surety Underwriter (Former Employee) - Ciudad de México - 13 January 2022

Zurich allowed me to balance my professional and personal life. I had the opportunity to learn and gain more experience but at the same time to spend time for myself. Since they are an international group, they are open to multiculturality. You can build your career and set goals with your Line Manager. Bear in mind that you must keep the pace and work hard since there will be more people competing for the same position.

Pros

Balanced schedules and benefits such as insurance and bonus.

Cons

Staff rotation

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Challenging

Underwriter (Current Employee) - Sioux Falls, SD - 3 December 2021

Company is a great company. Management is great to work with. The job is challenging and changes a lot due to government. They do a lot to keep the staff happy and involved.

Pros

Pay benefits

Cons

Can be to challenging

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Productive

Underwriter (Current Employee) - Sioux Falls, SD - 3 August 2021

Management is good. Work load is stressful. Training could be a lot better. Things constantly change and it is hard to keep up with all the things that change.

Pros

Pay benefits perks

Cons

Stress load

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Good company benefits, ineffective direct management, difficult to get promoted in core roles

Underwriter (Advanced) (Current Employee) - Remote - 28 June 2021

For years, the McKinsey method of placing highly educated individuals without practical experience in management roles (i.e. with a masters degree in business or otherwise who lacked actual insurance experience) has led to a frustrated workforce. Much emphasis on advancement is placed with one's manager as the main conduit for development and promotion. Imagine performing much of your daily function without the manager's understanding of these tasks. How can said manager possibly identify better performance or promote true individual performance. It's a catch-22 such that it is difficult to have meaningful develop plan discussions with someone whom they could be managing themselves. I have often witnessed a chosen few who happened to be favored by a senior executive at some point in their early career path continue to be chosen for a highly successful career path (but pushed along due to favortism rather than actual expertise). Now that the employable marketplace is shrinking, Zurich's XCO is switching to a hire-from-within rhethoric (again, words that have not yet been reflected in the company's actions - prior 3 year cost-cutting plans always centered on head count reduction). This IS a good company, benefits-wise, but advancement requires a lot of behind-scenes conversations if you are lucky enough to actually encounter such an invididual seeking your expertise within the company. HR is the MANAGER's advocate much more so than the employee (very unbalanced) and seemingly run interference against cross-unit advancement. Employees therefore leave the company to advance in -

Pros

Flexible work schedule, remote work, matching 401(k), Pto, pay level

Cons

Highly stressful / frustrating; lack of integrated work platforms (most are quite unreliable, often out of compliance requiring work-arounds), lower level managers are (often) not well versed in the job discipline in the area which they manage

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Great Place to Work

Underwriting Associate (Former Employee) - New York, NY - 25 April 2021

Get work life balance. Salary could be better. Summer hours. Excellent benefits. Overall great place to work. Would definitely recommend as an employer.

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Great company with excellent benefits

Underwriting Associate (Current Employee) - Maitland, FL - 19 April 2021

Great company with excellent benefits. 100% company match up to 6%, vested immediately. 20 PTO days, an the option to buy 5. Employees are allowed to work a flexible schedule.

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Do not take the job

Underwriter - Umbrella/Excess (Former Employee) - Atlanta, GA - 3 November 2020

Unless you are in desperate need of a job, I would say keep looking! They will tell you that advancement opportunities are there and that you are being paid above industry standard, but in reality they are just filling seats of the never ending employee turn around.

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Ok

Underwriter (Former Employee) - New York, NY - 16 July 2020

It was a decent place to work with good benefits and 401k. The direction of the management was not clear. I liked my boss and team. You can move within.

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AVP, Liability National Accounts Underwriter

Montréal, QC

30+ days ago

Zurich was a very good experience for me and built my skills and knowledge in underwriting commercial risks.

Underwriter (Former Employee) - Overland Park, KS - 10 January 2020

Zurich North America was a very pleasant and rewarding experience for me where I was able to learn a great deal and add to my expertise and knowledge of commercial insurance.

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Large Global Company

Underwriting Associate (Current Employee) - Jersey City, NJ - 15 December 2019

Gives back to the community. On shore and off shore employees. Constantly changing to keep up with the demands of the day to day. Multiple departments. Food at work.

Pros

Work Perks

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Education

Underwriting Associate (Former Employee) - Philadelphia, PA - 14 December 2019

Zurich invest heavily in their employees and make sure that they are knowledgeable in the field they are working in. Hands down the best company I've worked for as far as educating me and the area I was working in

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Behind the times

Underwriter (Former Employee) - Birmingham, West Midlands - 11 October 2019

It's a big brand, that's it. They look good on the internet and linkedin but that's not how it is behind closed doors. Technology really out-dated. Too much duplication in processing. Staff been there longer do what they want. No real progression. Internal interviews for progression always formally carried out but they still look outside the company for new staff. Too much sickness between all staff. Can't moan too much, could have been worse elsewhere.

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Poor Management -Lots of Changes

Market Facing Underwriter (Former Employee) - Maitland, FL - 8 October 2019

Zurich is good at recruiting people from outside the organization, but not promoting their internal candidates. Their management is ever changing and there is a sense of fear in keeping your job due to all the changes.

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Great company to learn adn advance

Underwriting Specialist (Former Employee) - Toronto, ON - 4 October 2019

Great culture great company to learn and advance flexible to transfer internationally Flexible working hours good work life balance Great management

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Tricky

Underwriting Services (Current Employee) - Schaumburg, IL - 18 August 2019

This company has constant revisions in their process just to come back around full circle. It's irritating to have to revise a workflow every month with no better results than the prior one.

Pros

Pto, casual dress code

Cons

Outdated systems, management overturn, outsourcing

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Reviews of companys should not be a requirement.

Middle Markets Commercial Underwriter (Current Employee) - Maitland, FL - 28 June 2019

Not interested in giving opinion on this company or its operations. This is a requirement for me to be able to post on Indeed, however I feel that this should not be a requirement.

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The 80/20 Rule

Underwriter (Former Employee) - Toronto, ON - 16 March 2019

Job Work/Life Balance - 20% of the employees do 80% of the work. If you are one of the 20%, you are rarely thanked let alone rewarded. 60+ hour weeks are not uncommon. Salary / Benefits - old pension is gone which was a huge motivator for employees to endure this place. Salary is below market average. Regardless, you will earn every penny. Job Security/Advancement -company is notorious for restructure and lay-offs almost annually. They prefer appointing external management over promoting from within. Management - some good, some bad. The good ones are at the mercy of an erratic and ever-changing corporate strategy. Job Culture - majority of staff is miserable and over-worked. There are fundraising and pizza-day events every once in a while. Morale has been so low for so long that it's somewhat trite, but the gesture is nice nonetheless.

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Slow moving

Underwriter (Former Employee) - Whiteley, Hampshire - 18 February 2019

Frustrating, slow moving change. Poorly implemented new systems resulted in the need to maintain old systems and new ones at the same time. Cottage industry workload without fully embracing change throughout lines of business

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The people make the company

Commercial Underwriter (Former Employee) - Johannesburg, Gauteng - 8 February 2019

I have not worked at Zurich Insurance Company for over two years. However ,my time spend at the company provided me with many opportunities. Zurich Insurance Company was where I learned the most and met many interesting people who were willing to share their knowledge.