Product Development Senior Professional

Job Summary:

The Product Development Senior Professional supports the formal product development life cycle for new products, product enhancements, and required insurance product changes. This role assists the Product Managers for assigned property and casualty insurance lines of business in developing product roadmaps and executing product strategy.

This role will have either or both of the following responsibilities:

• Technical product development which includes insurance policy form and coverage development, and supporting the advancement of other insurance product initiatives.
• Agile development and delivery responsibilities

Technical Product Responsibilities: This role may include leading technical product development and management of core insurance products, which includes insurance policy forms and notices. If assigned technical product responsibilities, this role supports company and product strategy, profitability, and customer needs by developing new insurance forms and coverages as well as enhancements or refinements to the existing insurance policy forms. Technical product responsibilities also include ensuring that assigned insurance products are compliant to state statutes and regulations. Individuals in this role serve as subject matter experts with regards to technical product knowledge, drafting policy language, and policy construction for assigned lines of business. Technical product development includes recommending and developing underwriting rules and guidelines for new and existing products.

Agile Product Responsibilities: This role may include Agile development responsibilities. Specifically, this role may entail serving as the lead business representative for assigned insurance products by providing Agile/IT development teams with clear specifications and expectations related to insurance product changes with IT components. This role entails working with the Agile/IT teams to ensure work is specified accurately and completed satisfactorily before it is elevated into production so that intended business outcomes are achieved.

This role supports business results by ensuring:

• Products are increasingly compelling to agents and customers
• Insurance products are compliant with state statute and regulation and supported by effective underwriting and business rules
• Insurance agents and customers experience a high degree of ease of use when interacting with company products
• Agile and IT teams can implement insurance product changes and new products efficiently and with clear specifications and success criteria

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Technical Product Job Responsibilities Include Some or All of the Following:

• Conducts market research and analysis to identify market trends and customer needs, gathers data, and analyzes it to determine customer preferences and make recommendations for new products.

• Regularly performs reviews of competitor forms to identify competitive insights. Clearly articulates differences between company and competitor forms. Maintains an archive of competitive forms.

• Assists the Product Development Manager with the product development life cycle (e.g., the development of new coverages, enhancement to existing coverages, etc.) by making recommendations for appropriate action, preparing form, rate, and rule materials for filing, identifying, and researching product deficiencies and opportunities and implementing approved product changes.

• Supports Product Managers with technical aspects of scripting and development of policy language, statutory changes, changes to existing policy forms, new form and policy development, and manual rules/guidelines. This includes working closely with company legal, claims, and underwriting partners to develop and review forms and coverage language to ensure clarity and that coverage aligns to coverage intent.

• Coordinates product and forms filings with a filing team. Supports form filings including objection responses related to the forms and associated rules.

• Leads updates to Rate, Rule, and Forms manuals and takes ownership of internal insurance product form libraries for assigned lines of business.

• Works closely with User Experience and other stakeholders to ensure a high degree of ease of use for agents and customers to interact with and select new products or product enhancements

• Develops coverage options for target customer segments.

• Performs initial screening of state insurance department and industry/bureau circulars/bulletins and determines what actions are necessary and makes recommendations to the Product Managers.

• Monitors and tracks industry news and practices from a product perspective to identify and potentially act on current or future trends.

• Serves as a product subject matter resource for assigned line(s) of business, and on projects and other corporate initiatives.

• Reviews, analyzes, validates and updates detailed product rules, rates and algorithms maintained in a series of semi-technical spreadsheets.

• Ensures proper communication and documentation of change specifications and will have authority for final sign-off of business requirements.

• Executes communication plans around new product enhancements to ensure internal stakeholders (underwriting, sales, operations, etc.) and agents are aware of changes so product initiatives are successful.

• Support state specific forms and compliance projects across lines of business.

Agile Job Responsibilities:

This role may include Agile Product Lead or Agile Product Owner responsibilities:

• This role requires adhering to, and advancing, Agile product development best practice processes.

• Translates higher level insurance product initiatives defined by Insurance Product Mangers into specifications for the Agile development teams. Documentation will include:

  • Business value expected from the initiative (initially provided by the Line of Business Product Managers)

  • Specifications for what is to be completed by technical teams.

  • Determination of the minimum viable outcomes (MVP) expected

  • Success criteria expected which will be used to evaluate the technical work completed.

• Proactively works with, or serves as, Agile Product Owners, to support refinement of technical specifications for usage by the IT teams. Agile Product Owners work closely with the Agile/IT teams to refine specifications and plan development roadmaps. Ensures that other Agile partners advance initiatives expeditiously.
• Serves as a subject matter expert for Agile/IT teams and responds promptly to questions from these technical partners.

• Attends Agile meetings to review product initiatives and evaluate the successful completion of technical work performed for product initiatives.

• Ensures that collaborating departments (IT, Digital, Actuarial, Education & Compliance, Claims, and Statistical Reporting) are well informed of changes and are included in timelines. Consults with key stakeholders as part of specifications gathering process.

• Works with the Insurance Line of Business Product Managers to keep product roadmaps updated, prioritized, and on schedule.

Job Qualifications:

• 3-5 years of experience in Insurance Product Development or Claims, an Agile Product Owner or equivalent role within the Insurance industry, or a related field.

• Bachelor's degree in Business or a related field and/or commensurate work experience.

Licenses and Certifications:

• Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) or other related insurance designations is Preferred
• Scaled Agile Certification (SAFe) may be Preferred

Location:

Hybrid- defined as working three or more days per week in the office if the employee's residence is within 50 miles of Westfield Center, OH; OR Remote-if the employee resides more than 50 miles from Westfield Center, OH.

Behavioral Competencies:

• Collaborates
• Communicates Effectively
• Customer Focus
• Decision Quality
• Nimble Learning
• Managing multiple projects concurrently

Technical Skills:

• New Product Development

• Project Management

• Product Development Lifecycle

• Business Requirement Gathering

• Business Analysis

• Product Management

• Product Roadmap

• Product Requirement Analysis

• Automation

• Technical Documentation

• Agile Product Development including Feature Writing

• Forms Writing

• Forms Filing

• Competitor Insurance Form Research

This job description describes the general nature and level of work performed in this role. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, skills, responsibilities, knowledge, etc. These may be subject to change and additional functions may be assigned as needed by management.