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October 7, 2026
India's non-life insurance industry continued to expand in FY2025-26, but the latest financial results show why premium growth cannot be examined in isolation. Gross direct premium income increased by almost 9% to approximately ₹3.36 lakh crore, while aggregate underwriting losses widened to ₹45,279 crore. Different published reports use slightly different FY2024-25 comparison figures, but they agree on the central point: underwriting performance deteriorated materially even as premium income increased. Read the latest reporting on FY2025-26 underwriting performance in India's non-life insurance industry.
Those numbers need careful interpretation. An industry-wide underwriting loss does not mean every insurer, business line, portfolio or individual underwriter performed poorly. Claims experience, expenses, product mix, pricing, catastrophe exposure, reinsurance arrangements and competitive conditions can produce very different outcomes across companies and portfolios. The data does, however, raise a useful workforce question for Indian General Insurance employers: when an insurer recruits an underwriting professional, what evidence actually demonstrates that the person can make good underwriting decisions?
Premium handled is relevant. Years of experience matter. Product and sector knowledge matter. Yet none of those measures, by themselves, establish whether an underwriter can consistently select, price, structure and manage risk in a way that supports a sustainable portfolio.
That distinction becomes particularly important when premium growth and underwriting performance are moving in different directions.
Revenue growth is visible and relatively easy to communicate. The quality of an underwriting decision is harder to assess because its consequences may become clearer only after claims develop, portfolio patterns emerge or market conditions change.
An underwriter can contribute to significant premium growth while accepting risks at terms that later prove inadequate. Another underwriter may write less business because they decline, reprice or restructure risks that do not fit the insurer's appetite. If recruitment focuses mainly on premium handled, the first profile can appear stronger even when the second professional may be demonstrating more disciplined underwriting judgement.
This does not mean growth and underwriting discipline are competing objectives. General insurers need both. The recruitment challenge is to establish whether a candidate understands the difference between generating premium and generating appropriately selected, appropriately structured and appropriately priced premium.
The General Insurance Council's historical analysis helps put this distinction into context. Its Indian Non-Life Insurance Industry Yearbook defines the combined ratio through incurred claims, commission and management expenses, and notes that combined ratios above 100% reflect adverse underwriting performance before the contribution of relevant investment income. Historical Council data also shows that adverse combined ratios are not unique to one financial year. See the General Insurance Council's Indian Non-Life Insurance Industry Yearbook for the underlying framework.
For talent teams, this should change the first conversation with an underwriting candidate. Instead of beginning only with, "How much premium did you handle?", employers should understand what underwriting decisions the candidate was personally responsible for and what happened to the business that was written.
Underwriting experience is frequently described through product or business categories. A candidate may have worked in motor, property, marine, liability or another General Insurance line. That tells an employer where the experience occurred, but it does not yet explain the depth of the person's underwriting capability.
Two candidates can work within the same line of business for the same number of years and still bring substantially different experience. One may have operated largely within established parameters, dealing with relatively standard risks and referring exceptions upward. Another may have assessed more complex cases, interpreted several risk factors, negotiated terms, identified exposures requiring additional information, recommended different conditions or determined that a risk should not be written in the form proposed.
Neither profile is automatically weak. They are simply appropriate for different levels and types of responsibility. The recruitment problem begins when the vacancy does not distinguish between them.
India's regulatory framework itself treats underwriting as a structured risk-management activity. IRDAI's Master Circular on General Insurance Business states that insurers should maintain risk-level information, including associated claims information, and that underwriting evaluation and acceptance should be primarily guided by the insurer's Board-approved underwriting and risk-management policy. The Circular also links those guidelines with the structure and scope of applicable reinsurance treaties.
This gives employers a useful hiring principle: product familiarity should not be confused with risk-assessment capability.
An interview should establish what information the candidate actually examined before reaching a decision. Employers need to understand which factors materially changed an assessment, what caused the candidate to seek additional information, when terms were altered and under what circumstances a decision required referral.
The objective is not to test whether somebody has memorised an underwriting manual. It is to understand how they think when the information in front of them does not fit neatly into a standard case.
Some of the most revealing underwriting decisions occur when commercial pressure and risk judgement point in different directions.
A distributor may request a more competitive quote. A strategically important account may be at stake. A renewal may be vulnerable to a competitor. A business team may believe that retaining or acquiring the customer is commercially important. None of these circumstances automatically means an underwriter should refuse the business, but they affect the environment in which the decision is being made.
That is where underwriting discipline becomes visible.
A capable underwriter needs to understand why a risk has been priced in a particular way, what assumptions support the proposed terms and which elements can legitimately change. Depending on the risk, the appropriate response might involve adjusting rates, deductibles, limits, exclusions, warranties or other terms. Additional risk information or risk improvements may make the proposal acceptable. In other circumstances, the conclusion may be that the business does not fit the insurer's appetite on terms that make commercial sense.
Employers therefore need to explore the mechanics behind a candidate's decisions rather than asking only whether the person is "commercial" or "good at negotiation".
A useful interview conversation can examine an actual case in which the candidate faced pressure to offer more competitive terms. The key issue is not whether they refused the request or agreed to it. The employer needs to understand what information informed the decision, which alternatives were considered, what authority the candidate personally held, whether escalation was required and what happened after the risk was accepted, restructured or declined.
The strongest answer may not be attached to the largest premium. It may be the answer that demonstrates the clearest judgement.
Underwriting does not end when the policy is issued.
The quality of an underwriting decision eventually encounters reality through claims experience. This does not mean every claim proves that the original decision was poor. Insurance exists precisely because losses occur. The more important question is whether patterns in claims reveal something about risk selection, pricing, policy terms, concentration, information quality or assumptions that should influence future underwriting decisions.
IRDAI's General Insurance framework specifically requires insurers to organise risk-level information in a way that includes associated claims reported and settled. That regulatory connection between the risk written and the claims subsequently experienced is particularly relevant when evaluating underwriting capability.
An experienced underwriter should therefore be able to discuss considerably more than new-business activity. Employers should understand how the candidate has used loss experience, whether recurring claims patterns have changed the way a class of business was assessed and how the candidate responded when portfolio experience began to challenge earlier assumptions.
The conversation should also establish how the candidate interacted with Claims, Actuarial, Risk and other relevant functions. If a portfolio deteriorated, did the underwriter help identify why? Did pricing or terms change? Were additional controls introduced? Was a recurring claims pattern treated as an isolated operational issue, or did it cause the business to reconsider how particular risks were being selected?
This becomes increasingly important as professionals move into senior underwriting positions. A manager is no longer responsible only for individual cases. They are helping the insurer understand what the accumulated experience of a portfolio is saying about the business already written.
An individual risk can appear acceptable while still contributing to an undesirable portfolio outcome. That is why progression in underwriting eventually requires professionals to think beyond one proposal at a time.
A senior underwriter or underwriting manager needs to understand how individual decisions accumulate. They require visibility into business mix, concentration, exposure patterns, claims development, profitability and whether the portfolio is becoming disproportionately dependent on a particular risk type, geography, distribution source or commercial segment.
The precise metrics will differ by insurer and line of business, but the principle remains consistent. The more senior the role becomes, the less sufficient it is to demonstrate only that the person can underwrite an individual policy correctly.
IRDAI's General Insurance framework reinforces this portfolio perspective. The regulatory guidance requires an annual performance review of products and lines of business, including the risk profile of exposures assumed, their underwriting results, relevant workflows and process controls, claims service levels and reinsurance considerations.
This distinction should also appear in job descriptions. A vacancy requiring portfolio responsibility should make that responsibility explicit. Employers should be clear about whether the person will primarily evaluate individual risks, manage an underwriting desk, own a particular portfolio, supervise delegated authority, support pricing decisions or carry broader accountability for underwriting performance across a business segment.
Without that clarity, a candidate with strong transactional experience can appear to fit a position that actually requires portfolio leadership.
An underwriter does not make decisions in isolation from the insurer's wider risk architecture.
IRDAI's General Insurance guidance explicitly connects underwriting evaluation and acceptance with the structure and scope of reinsurance arrangements applying to the relevant line of business. The Authority also maintains a separate Master Circular on Reinsurance as part of the regulatory framework governing insurers' reinsurance activity.
This does not mean every underwriting professional needs to become a reinsurance specialist. The level of knowledge required should depend on the position.
For an early-career underwriter operating within clearly defined parameters, detailed reinsurance structuring may sit outside the role. For senior, specialist or large-risk underwriting positions, however, employers should understand whether the candidate appreciates how retention, available capacity and reinsurance constraints can affect the risks an insurer is prepared to accept.
A risk may look commercially attractive when viewed through premium alone while creating a different problem when considered against the insurer's overall exposure and protection arrangements.
Experienced candidates should therefore be able to explain where their own authority ended, when a risk required referral and how other specialist functions influenced the final decision. The objective is not to reward candidates for using technical vocabulary. It is to establish whether they understand where underwriting sits within the wider insurance system.
A recurring challenge in specialist recruitment is distinguishing between being exposed to a decision and actually owning that decision.
An underwriting professional may spend years working on large or complex accounts while continuing to operate inside relatively narrow authority. Another professional with fewer years may already hold meaningful decision-making authority across a defined portfolio.
A CV rarely makes that distinction clear.
Phrases such as "handled underwriting", "managed commercial risks" or "responsible for policy issuance" can describe significantly different levels of accountability. Employers therefore need to understand what the candidate could actually approve, what required referral, how much discretion existed around terms and pricing, what happened when a risk fell outside normal appetite and how much judgement the role genuinely required.
This becomes particularly important during promotion into management.
A strong individual underwriter does not automatically become a strong underwriting leader. Management introduces additional responsibilities around consistency, referrals, coaching, quality control, authority discipline, portfolio oversight and the development of junior professionals.
A manager also needs to recognise whether a weak decision is simply an individual error or evidence of something broader in the process, data, guidance, training or incentives surrounding the team.
General Insurance is a commercial business. Underwriters cannot operate as though premium, customers, distribution relationships and competitive conditions are irrelevant.
At the same time, commercial awareness should not become a euphemism for accepting business at any price.
Strong underwriting professionals can work productively with distribution and business teams while remaining clear about the risk the insurer is being asked to accept. They understand the commercial objective but can explain when the proposed terms do not support it appropriately.
That capability requires communication as well as technical knowledge.
An underwriter who simply says "no" without explaining the risk logic may create unnecessary friction. An underwriter who always finds a way to say "yes" can create a different problem. The more valuable capability is being able to explain why a risk is difficult, what additional information could change the assessment, which alternative structure may be workable and when the organisation should genuinely decline the opportunity.
This becomes more important at senior levels because underwriting leaders frequently need to translate risk decisions for colleagues who do not work inside underwriting. They may have to explain why strong premium growth in a segment is not translating into acceptable underwriting performance, why particular business requires repricing or why an apparently attractive commercial opportunity needs tighter risk selection.
Employers should assess whether candidates can communicate those decisions clearly rather than hiding behind technical terminology.
Digital tools, structured data, analytics and automated workflows increasingly influence insurance operations, but this should not lead employers to turn every underwriting vacancy into an artificial-intelligence vacancy.
The more useful question is whether technology improves the quality, consistency and speed of underwriting decisions.
An underwriter may increasingly receive structured information through digital channels instead of relying exclusively on manual proposal documents. Automated rules can deal with straightforward cases, while analytical systems can identify patterns that would be difficult to recognise manually. These developments can change how work is performed, but they do not remove the need to determine whether the available information is adequate, whether an exception makes sense or whether a more complex risk requires human review.
For recruitment, the relevant capability is therefore broader than generic "digital skills".
Employers should understand whether a candidate can work confidently with structured underwriting data, recognise when information is insufficient, interrogate an unusual output, document the reasoning behind an exception and maintain appropriate judgement when a system does not provide an obvious answer.
The value of an experienced underwriter is not that they can compete with an automated system in processing routine information. It is that they can understand what the information means when the risk becomes less routine.
Technical terminology has an important place in an underwriting interview. Employers need to establish whether a candidate understands the relevant line of business, product structure and risk concepts.
Terminology, however, is relatively easy to prepare for. Decision-making is harder to manufacture.
Experienced-hire interviews should therefore spend more time examining actual underwriting situations. A candidate can be asked to discuss a risk they declined despite commercial pressure and explain the reasoning. Another conversation could examine a renewal where loss experience required a change in terms. Employers can explore a case in which the information originally supplied was insufficient and understand what the candidate did before reaching a decision.
For a senior candidate, the discussion should move to portfolio level. The employer should understand what indicated that performance was deteriorating and how the candidate determined whether the problem related to pricing, selection, claims experience, concentration, business mix or another factor. The most useful part of the answer is what the candidate personally changed and what happened afterwards.
Across these conversations, a few underlying questions matter consistently: what did the person actually decide, what information supported the decision, what alternatives were considered, what fell within their authority and what happened once the decision was implemented?
Those questions help separate genuine ownership from simple exposure.
The hiring standard needs to change again when recruiting an Underwriting Head, portfolio leader or other senior underwriting professional.
At this level, the employer is no longer recruiting only for technical judgement on individual risks. The person may be responsible for underwriting strategy, portfolio performance, people capability, governance, referrals, interaction with Claims and Actuarial teams, product decisions and the relationship between risk appetite and commercial growth.
The connection between underwriting performance and talent management has become particularly visible in India. In September 2026, the Centre's reported turnaround strategy for National Insurance Company, The Oriental Insurance Company and United India Insurance Company called for an underwriting overhaul alongside performance-linked talent management. The strategy concerns those specific state-owned insurers and should not be generalised across the entire market, but it provides a concrete Indian example of underwriting performance being treated simultaneously as a business and people issue. Read more about the turnaround strategy for the three state-owned general insurers.
That connection should influence senior recruitment.
An underwriting leader needs to identify whether performance problems originate in individual judgement, portfolio strategy, authority design, pricing, data, processes, capability or the way commercial targets influence underwriting behaviour.
Simply promoting the technically strongest individual underwriter will not automatically solve those problems.
Leadership hiring therefore needs evidence of how a candidate has influenced other people's decisions, improved underwriting consistency, strengthened portfolio quality, managed referrals, developed people and responded when actual performance did not match expectations.
The same precision employers need should appear on an underwriting CV.
A profile stating that somebody was "responsible for General Insurance underwriting and premium growth" leaves too much unanswered. Candidates should make the nature of their responsibility easier to understand by explaining the business segment, types of risks assessed, degree of complexity, level of authority and whether the position included pricing, renewals, referrals, portfolio responsibility, risk improvement, claims review or substantial interaction with other specialist functions.
Where genuine results can be demonstrated, the context behind those results matters.
A candidate who improved portfolio performance should explain what changed and which part they personally owned. A professional who supported profitable growth should distinguish premium expansion from improvement in underlying underwriting performance. Someone who participated in a portfolio review should not describe themselves as having led it unless they genuinely held that responsibility.
Precision strengthens an underwriting profile because underwriting itself depends on disciplined assessment.
Candidates should also be prepared to discuss difficult decisions at interview rather than arriving with only examples of large or successful accounts. A well-explained decision to decline, reprice or restructure unsuitable business can demonstrate considerably more underwriting maturity than a long list of headline premiums.
The FY2025-26 industry results should not lead employers to conclude that there is one standard underwriting problem across Indian General Insurance.
Different insurers, lines of business and portfolios face different pressures. One organisation may require stronger individual risk assessment. Another may need greater portfolio discipline. A third may be reviewing pricing, underwriting authority, specialist capability or the way underwriting decisions interact with claims experience.
Recruitment should begin by identifying that problem.
If the requirement is primarily additional underwriting capacity, the candidate profile should reflect that. If the organisation needs somebody to improve portfolio quality, employers require evidence of portfolio ownership and decision-making. If the vacancy is for senior leadership, the assessment should include people, governance, performance management and the ability to connect underwriting decisions with wider business outcomes.
A longer job description does not create that clarity.
Before recruitment begins, employers should be able to explain what underwriting responsibility the person will actually own, which decisions they will be authorised to make, what outcomes will indicate success and which other functions they will need to work with.
That makes it easier to evaluate candidates against the business requirement rather than against a familiar job title.
India's General Insurance industry needs growth. Expanding insurance protection remains commercially and economically important, and underwriting discipline should not become an argument for unnecessary conservatism.
The challenge is sustainable growth.
The FY2025-26 results demonstrate why premium growth and underwriting performance need to be considered together. A growing top line is valuable, but it does not by itself explain whether risks have been selected appropriately, terms adequately reflect the exposure, portfolio concentration is understood or claims experience is influencing future decisions.
For employers, that means underwriting recruitment should move beyond years of experience and premium handled. The more important question is whether the person can demonstrate the judgement required to assess the right risks, structure them appropriately, learn from portfolio experience and make defensible decisions when commercial pressure, incomplete information and uncertainty are present at the same time.
For candidates, the implication is equally clear. Make the decisions behind your underwriting experience visible. Explain what you assessed, what authority you held, how you responded when the risk or portfolio changed and what happened to the business you helped underwrite.
Underwriting talent should ultimately be evaluated in much the same way underwriting itself works: not through one headline number, but by understanding the quality of the risk and the judgement behind the decision.
At PharmaSolution Placement, we are a specialist Indian recruitment firm focused on the Pharmaceutical and Insurance sectors. Within Insurance, we work with employers to understand the capability a role genuinely requires and with professionals looking for relevant opportunities to advance their careers.
Insurance professionals considering their next move can Explore All Jobs or Submit their CV. Employers reviewing specialist, management or leadership hiring requirements can Submit a Job or Contact Us to discuss their recruitment requirements.
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