UnderwriteMe reviews about "people"

Transformations and changes in direction are difficult for some, that's unfortunately the nature of the beast, but I believe the company is going in the right direction and more importantly doing it in the right way.

TLDR; I wouldn't recommend anyone I care about working here. Declining culture. This has steadily declined over the last 12 months or so. It's become the sort of place that makes people come into the office because it's an arbitrary day of the week, despite some people being initially recruited on a remote-first basis. That's further compounded by the office being too small for everyone, so people travel into the office to be on video calls with remote people. Genius. Poor leadership pursued an approach that recently led to many redundancies across product and tech. Good people undoubtedly hurt. There's also a lack of alignment and collaboration across leadership. Some of the leaders don't pursue open communication and collaboration, instead preferring to 'politically manoeuvre' as someone else so eloquently put it. I've personally witnessed undermining comments and conflicting strategies. If you are familiar with the term HiPPO, then you should expect that amongst some parts of the leadership. Just make sure you agree with everything a particular key individual suggests and you'll be fine. Strategically I think they have a challenge too. The two largest insurers in the UK aren't on the platform (public information). If they can't get them onto the platform, how long will users remain? Competitors who offer whole-of-market could relatively easily eat into their market share if they develop a compelling alternative.

Over the past year, UnderwriteMe has undertaken a new direction in terms of product strategy built on the opinions, experience and expertise of a very limited but specific group of people. The expertise, however, does not appear to be based on any deep-level understanding of the insurance industry or the existing UnderwriteMe products. As well as, or maybe because of, the above, there also appears to be a significant shift in the culture of UnderwriteMe which does not feel positive or inclusive to all employees. While this can be dismissed as being as a result of the recent large-scale redundancies, the common thread of other reviews on Glassdoor around the impact of this shift in product direction tells another story.

For me, one of the worst things about UnderwriteMe is the isolation of teams and streams of work within the company. I feel like teams from different products or even areas within a product don't communicate as much as they should. Given the relatively small company size, it seems sensible to have much more sharing of knowledge, idea, tools, etc, at all levels and not just at a management one.

As the company transitions to a product-led approach, many processes are still evolving

- HR don't listen - company policy are vague - Job saftey

Poor tech stack, once good but underinvested and now loaded with tech debt. Treat people like resources. CTO was ousted by CPO to form a CPTO with no understanding of product or technology. Lack of understanding of what a product company is - the CPTO is driving them to be project using agile and product words. A loss-making, wholly Owned by Pacific Life Re, and most likely to be broken up for parts with some sold off to attempt to re-coup the poor investment. Repeat redundancy programmes losing some of the best staff.

The company culture has shifted toward a toxic, micromanaged environment. There’s little focus on meaningful outcomes; instead, emphasis is placed on control and blame. Management can be quick to deflect responsibility, often at the expense of their team