---
title: 'Director, Life Underwriting at Ethos Life'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-life-underwriting-ethos-life-bengaluru-t8fkwry4q9a6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-26'
---

# Director, Life Underwriting at Ethos Life

- **Company:** Ethos Life
- **Location:** Bengaluru, India
- **Posted:** 2026-10-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-26
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/ethoslife/jobs/8903550002

## Job description

## About Ethos

Ethos (Nasdaq: $LIFE) is a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale. With its robust three-sided technology platform, Ethos is transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers alike. Ethos offers instant, accessible products and a seamless online process that requires no medical exams and just a few health questions; it eliminates traditional barriers, making it easier than ever for everyone to protect their families. Ethos is redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten.

## About the role

We are looking for a Director, Life Underwriting to lead our underwriting production function, with a strong emphasis on team performance, people development, and operational excellence. This role is accountable for ensuring consistent, high-quality underwriting output while building and developing a high-performing, scalable team that meets production targets, turnaround time (TAT), and service level agreement (SLA) commitments.This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can balance strategic oversight with day-to-day operational rigor, and who is equally comfortable coaching underwriters as they are managing dashboards and production metrics. You will be a champion of AI-enabled ways of working, continuously looking for ways to remove manual effort, shorten cycle times, and raise the productivity of every team member.

Duties and Responsibilities:

- UW Production & Quality:
- Own underwriting production output, ensuring volume and quality targets are met
- Identify and recommend automation opportunities (straight-through processing, AI-assisted case review) to increase throughput without compromising quality
- Partner with Underwriting Auditors to track audit findings and drive corrective action
- Ensure decisions align with guidelines, risk appetite, and regulations
- People Development:
- Lead and grow a team of underwriters and supervisors/managers
- Oversee onboarding/training programs and build career development pathways
- Drive a coaching culture and strong team retention
- Performance Management:
- Establish clear, measurable performance standards for underwriters and supervisors across productivity, set productivity targets, quality standards, TAT, and compliance
- Drive performance against TAT/SLA targets across case types
- Build reporting to track real-time production and SLA performance
- Resolve issues causing breaches; coordinate with Sales/Ops/Claims on escalations
- Conduct regular performance reviews, using audit findings and production data to identify trends and root causes of underperformance
- Lead structured, constructive conversations on performance gaps, including formal Performance Improvement Plans where warranted
- Ensure consistency in performance evaluation standards across teams, especially in distributed/cross-geography setups
- Recognize and reward high performers to reinforce a strong performance culture alongside accountability
- Team & Org Leadership:
- Build and scale teams as business needs grow
- Manage capacity planning against volume forecasts
- Ensure consistency in UW practices across distributed teams
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement, experimentation, and openness to new technology
- Stakeholder management:
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Key UW point of contact for Sales, Operations, Compliance, and Engineering
- Represent UW in cross functional meetings; influence stakeholders on process changes using data

Qualifications and Skills:

- 15+ years in Life Insurance Underwriting, with strong people management experience
- Proven track record managing production to standards at scale
- Proven experience managing large teams (80/100+ members).
- Experience building/leading UW teams (direct and/or cross-geography)
- Strong technical UW knowledge, data-driven decision-making, and stakeholder influencing and communication skills
- Bachelor's degree required; UW certifications (LOMA, FALU) are preferred

#LI-Onsite

## #LI-KP2

Don’t meet every single requirement? If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. At Ethos we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Pursuant to the SF Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrests and conviction records.

To learn more about what information we collect and how it may be used, please refer to our [California Candidate Privacy Notice](https://res.cloudinary.com/getethos/image/upload/v1684458868/00_CMS/CURRENT_CRPA_Privacy_Notice_for_Job_Applicants_05-23.docx_-_Google_Docs_lr4j43.pdf).

Recruitment Notice: Please be aware of recruitment scams. All legitimate communication from our team will only come from email addresses ending in @ethos.com or @getethos.com.

We will never ask for payment, banking details, or sensitive personal information during the hiring process. If you are contacted by someone claiming to represent us from a different email address, please treat it as fraudulent.

## About Ethos Life

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Ethos is a technology company that simplifies and accelerates the process of buying life insurance using AI-driven underwriting and a fully digital, vertically integrated platform.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NASDAQ: LIFE)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Peter Colis (CEO), Lingke Wang

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Insurance (Insurtech / Life Insurance)
- **Target customers**: B2C (consumers seeking life insurance), B2B (independent agents and brokers), and B2B (carrier partners).
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "To protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale." [sec.gov](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1788451/000119312526029993/d901135d424b4.htm)

## Products & Services
- **Term Life Insurance**: Digital-first, fully online application and underwriting, with instant decisions for 95% of applicants. No medical exam required for many policies.
- **Whole Life Insurance**: Permanent life insurance product with a cash value component, offered fully online.
- **Indexed Universal Life (IUL) Insurance**: Flexible premium, permanent life insurance with growth potential tied to a market index.
- **Accumulation IUL**: An IUL product focused on cash value accumulation.
- **Supplemental Health Insurance**: Including Cancer Insurance and other health-related products.
- **Wills & Estate Planning**: A digital service to create wills and estate plans, extending the company's role in long-term family financial planning. [ethos.com](https://www.ethos.com/)
- **Agent OS**: An all-in-one operating system for independent agents that streamlines quoting, application submission, and policy management, enabling them to sell more policies efficiently. [sec.gov](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1788451/000119312526029993/d901135d424b4.htm)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Market Cap at IPO price (late 2025) was approximately $1.6B. Currently a public company; market cap fluctuates. Total funding prior to IPO was $606.5M. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethoslife)
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue was **$387.6M** in the latest fiscal year. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethoslife)
- **Key Metric**: **Over 500,000 policies activated** since inception. As of Sept 30, 2025, over **10,000 active selling agents** on the platform. [sec.gov](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1788451/000119312526029993/d901135d424b4.htm)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Google Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund, Jay-Z, Kevin Durant, Robert Downey Jr. [job-boards.greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/ethoslife)
- **Growth Signals**: Revenue grew **60%** (from $160M to $255M) from FY2023 to FY2024. Headcount grew **35.5%** YoY. Expanded product lineup from 1 product in 2019 to 10 by end of 2024. Achieved GAAP profitability in 2023 and has maintained positive net income. Named to CB Insights' Global Insurtech 50 list and BuiltIn's Top 100 Midsize Companies in San Francisco. [sec.gov](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1788451/000119312526029993/d901135d424b4.htm)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary AI Underwriting Engine**: Ingests up to 250,000 data points per application (prescription history, credit scores, MVRs) to assess risk instantly and individually, leading to 95% of applicants getting a decision in minutes vs. weeks for traditional insurers. [sec.gov](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1788451/000119312526029993/d901135d424b4.htm)
- **Asset-Light, Scalable Model**: Does not take balance sheet risk; partners with carriers for underwriting. This allows rapid scaling and high gross margins (97-98%).
- **Vertically Integrated Tech Stack**: Full-stack, cloud-native platform handles everything from distribution to underwriting, activation, and administration, creating a seamless experience and durable network effects across consumers, agents, and carriers.
- **Strong Network Effects**: As the platform scales and collects more data, the underwriting engine improves, which improves conversion and attracts more agents and carriers, creating a self-reinforcing flywheel.

## Strategic Focus
- **Product Expansion**: Rapidly adding new life insurance and adjacent financial products (IUL, estate planning, supplemental health).
- **Agent & Channel Growth**: Scaling the independent agent channel via Agent OS, while maintaining a strong direct-to-consumer channel.
- **International Expansion**: Operating in 10 countries (including India, Singapore, Canada, Lithuania), with significant engineering and operations hubs in Bangalore, India.
- **Continued AI & Data Science Moat**: Deepening the proprietary underwriting engine's capabilities to further improve conversion, pricing, and risk selection.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as having "intellectual rigor," a "bias for impact," and a "one-team, one-dream mentality." Employees are empowered to dream big and execute quickly with minimal red tape. Values include "speak your mind" and "serve our families." [ethos.com](https://www.ethos.com/careers/)
- **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: "Digital-first" company. Over half of the team is remote across the US. Has offices in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Singapore. Many roles are "Remote US." [ethos.com](https://www.ethos.com/careers/)
- **Compensation & Benefits**:
    - Top-tier medical, dental, vision insurance.
    - 401(k) plan with company contributions.
    - Generous paid time off + full company holiday schedule.
    - **100% wage replacement** for new parents during parental leave; coverage for family planning and fertility.
    - **Company equity** for all employees. [ethos.com](https://www.ethos.com/careers/)
- **Impact**: Employees report having "outsized impact and true ownership" over successes, with the chance to "revitalize an industry for good." [ethos.com](https://www.ethos.com/careers/)
- **Growth Trajectory**: Rapidly growing (35%+ headcount growth), with recent IPO strength and a clear, well-funded path to market leadership in a massive, legacy industry.

## Sources
1. [ethos.com](https://www.ethos.com/)
2. [ethos.com/careers/](https://www.ethos.com/careers/)
3. [job-boards.greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/ethoslife)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethoslife)
5. [sec.gov](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1788451/000119312526029993/d901135d424b4.htm)

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