Valerie Turpin (She/Her)
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I am the head of US commercial property underwriting at Arch insurance. I manage a team of 50+ professional across the USA. I have worked in both the excess and surplus and the admitted markets.
Prior to working in the USA, I had spend 20 years in the commercial property underwriting market in Europe. I am originally from France. My background is engineering and law.
Valerie’s Career Stories
What is the one piece of career advice you wish someone gave you when you were younger?
I have developed my career, thanks to 2 sponsors. Sponsors are not coaches, nor mentors. They are people that leaders trust, they have networks and they are versatile. They are like match makers. My sponsors knew little about my technical skills, but they knew about my personality, my reputation and they recommended me to my future bosses, because they knew that I would be a good fit.
In layperson terms, what do you actually do at work?
As a manager of a rather large team, my job is not about knowing all the technical aspects of underwriting. My daily job is to anticipate what can happen and prepare for it, identify what we should do and we don't do yet, recruit talents so the team has multiple complementary skills, both technical and soft. And more importantly, my job is about communicating. I should make sure that everyone in the team, the customers and the vendors know why we are doing what we do and what we are doing. I work a bit in the how to do it, but this part should be a collective effort with the team. They usually know better than me how to get the best results.