Pros
Employee Stock Option Plan, decent benefits
Cons
If you can enthusiastically admire the Emperor's new clothes, you may be fine here. Entitled executives want admiration and gratitude from the troops, so stifle your honest feedback (believe the “open door” rhetoric at your peril). The company used to be quite flat in structure: over the past 5 years, the number of superfluous execs has ballooned, while more work has been heaped on the underwriting staff. Depending on the region, there may be little technical proficiency at the management level; some short-sighted managers see process as a cheap substitute for underwriting acumen and experience. There’s a rush to automate as much as possible without proper vetting of the systems or the results. Underwriters are pressured to sell, but classes of business and product offerings are limited. Little effort is spent on developing underwriters, so if you want to grow in your career, plan to move on after 2 or 3 years. Lower than industry-average salaries and virtually non-existent bonuses have been justified for years by the ESOP program, but the value depends on company performance, so you are trading real salary dollars for an unknown future quantity.
