The Datum Report

Occupation 3532 · Associate professional occupations

Insurance underwriters

Half of full-time insurance underwriters in the UK earn more than £41,610 a year, and half earn less.

Insurance underwriters identify and measure the risks associated with an activity, determine whether this risk is insurable and issue insurance policies which provide financial compensation in the event of loss.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic requirements, although many employers expect entrants to study for and attain the associateship examinations of the Chartered Insurance Institute. Entrants to professional examinations usually require GCSEs/S grades and A levels/H grades, or a BTEC/SQA award.

What the work involves

• receives and assesses proposals and propositions for insurance from brokers and clients
• identifies and evaluates the risks associated with a proposal
• liaises with insurance surveyors, actuaries and risk managers where the risks associated with a proposal are not clear
• calculates premiums, provides quotations and, if acceptable to the client, issues policies
• ensures that the insurance policy clearly defines the liabilities accepted and any exceptions or exclusions
• negotiates terms of reinsurance contracts

Also called

Account handler (insurance) · Commercial underwriter · Insurance inspector · Mortgage underwriter · Underwriter

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for insurance underwriters, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 2 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Brokers · Financial accounts managers · Financial and accounting technicians