A lot of redundancies, but overall an excellent firm to work with!
Pros
*Remote work availability *Diversity training *Highly visible philanthropic efforts *Excellent benefits: 401K match, excellent health plans, dental plans, and even the opportunity to open health savings accounts for plans with high deductibles *Transamerica encourages furthering your education w/incentives such as tuition reimbursement for both college and technical-skill related courses *Acceptable Underwriting technologies - They are not cohesively designed for UW, but they get the job done! *Recruitment - They are my favorite people in this firm. :) They are very, very passionate about finding candidates, prompt with interviews, and they are very diligent about checking in with you during the app review and post-interview process. I've never experienced something like that until I applied with Transamerica.
Cons
*The Director's role in Underwriting is redundant: Transamerica is built on the principles of Peter Drucker, namely Management by Objectives. This is to ensure employees set goals and then meet them, while management coaches them along in the process. The issue is, Directors are often interjecting themselves into these processes, making it redundant for Underwriting managers/Supervisors to take ownership for the staff they manage. In organizations which use MBO, there's absolutely no need for Directors, let alone top management intermediaries unless there's a crucial issue. *The pay is slightly lower than market value. *Revolving doors: Starting to see an increase in turnover. I don't notice many promotions or transitions to new department, but since this is still the time of the Great Resignation, many people are staying "on notice" when something externally becomes available. The Chief UW has changed many, many times in the past few years, also with one leaving the firm abruptly this year - without explanation. This. could really be a bad signal to those in lower management and employees. *Lack of diversity in leadership and top management roles: There are no Black and Brown women in these roles. There's mainly White women, Some Latinx men, and older White men. You mean to tell me out of ALL of the people who hold higher degrees, substantial credibilities, and who are literally trained to be leaders and CONSULTANTS you couldn't find not ONE Black or Brown woman to hold Upper Management roles? *Lack of leadership training: I feel as though management will eventually get better at this, since more people are starting to retire and innovation is taking over Underwriting. There's a lack of leadership among management. The ability to delegate tasks of course, is minimized since this firm is a MBO firm. HOWEVER - Whenever management and top management provide feedback to employees, there's no real coaching or inspiring behind it. Part of being an excellent manager extends beyond being funny, charismatic, and a hard worker. They need to be visible, complementary to their teams, and emphatic - no one actually thanks employees genuinely outside of their work. *Lack of mentorship: Not once have I seen anyone encourage this at this firm. There's so much potential with our Underwriting Support staff for them to become career-developed underwriters, and instead of creating/implementing an Associate Underwriting Program to develop this career path, we remain understaffed with our Sr. Underwriters. This makes no sense. *Coaching - I just don't feel as though management does an excellent job of developing future leaders. This could be because they aren't appropriately trained to do this, or it could be out of sheer laziness. I've worked with so many Fortune 500 companies who held high standards toward mentorship and leadership, so it could be that on a personal level, my expectations are much, much higher for this company.
