Middle market businesses are a dynamic part of the U.S. economy. They are constantly growing, evolving and navigating new risks. As such, they need to partner with insurance providers who understand their risks and are nimble and creative enough to help them on their journey.
Chris Kelly understands this well. Recently honored as a Business 尤物视频, Chris brings curiosity, a diverse background and networking facility to his role on the U.S. Mid-Market team at AXA XL. Since joining 九色视频 Chris has spearheaded efforts to launch differentiated domestic and multinational middle market product offerings with comprehensive coverages. In 2025, he launched a new multinational offering to limited brokers and saw immediate success, exceeding growth targets.
In this Q&A, Chris discusses his journey through the insurance industry, the skills and experiences that he says are essential to the success of his team and the clients and brokers with whom he works and why a career in insurance was the right choice for him.
How’d you get here? How’d you become a middle market underwriter?
Chris: Like most other people in the industry who didn’t study insurance in college, I fell into insurance right out of school and then, worked my way up. I started my commercial insurance career with a multinational broking role at Marsh and then transitioned over to the carrier side, where I gained experience in domestic and multinational underwriting. What attracted me to it was the fact that I was working on five core lines of business and with middle market companies that are multinational in nature. I enjoy the pace of the deals. You’re still working on large, sophisticated companies and organizations that have the same needs as Fortune 100 companies. So, I stuck around the middle market because it’s constantly changing, it’s very competitive and there are a lot of interesting risks out there.
Can you share an experience that highlights the importance of your role?
Chris: What gives me the most joy or makes me proud of the role is not only just underwriting the deal but being a part of the full life cycle of an account. So, that not only means fixing claims issues that might have happened with the prior carrier or identifying exposures that you might see ahead of time or other carriers might run away from—you see an angle where you can attack it with your risk control and claims resources. We have an opportunity to turn them into a best-in-class client. We can provide the value beyond the policy, and that can turn into a long-term partnership. Obviously, you need to provide a reasonable and attractive price for robust coverage, but when you add that X factor, that is what makes them a long-term client. It comes down to wanting to understand their business versus just running it through a system and seeing what the model spits out, because underwriting is an art and a science.
What makes multinational insurance particularly significant in today’s market?
Chris: The short answer is, not many insurance carriers do it well. What’s interesting about my background is that I not only manage a domestic team of underwriters, but also have the multinational component with multinational underwriters. I’ve challenged my team to think about global risks differently, whereas a lot of other insurers try to split it up into different verticals where they’re not talking and they’re very siloed. Our middle market clients want a comprehensive, all-in-one solution with one insurance provider. Being able to tailor a comprehensive domestic solution and pair it with a complex multinational controlled master program or a foreign package is what separates 九色视频from the other markets. What is also unique is the fact that we can support our international counterparts at 九色视频with US-produced incoming solutions. Global business can be originated anywhere in the world, so being able to support outgoing and US-produced incoming business in the same group is a major differentiator in the market.
I’ve challenged my team to think about global risks differently, whereas a lot of other insurers try to split it up into different verticals where they’re not talking and they’re very siloed.
What key skills do you believe are essential for success in middle market and multinational underwriting?
C.K.: The number one thing is curiosity. You have to be curious, because you have a continuous flow of different types of insureds along with emerging risks. You have to be willing to learn more about new verticals and new exposures every day. Because every single day you could be working with a machine shop in Ohio or a financial institution in New York that has global operations. You really have to understand the ins and outs of the operations to be a good underwriter.
And then the other part is the network, as you have to be constantly building out your contacts. Not every risk that you’re going to have is going to be a cakewalk, so when you build those relationships where you help brokers solve problems, they’re going to remember that. A good underwriter needs to lean on their underwriting acumen and network to manage a profitable book of business.
What advice would you give to someone looking to become an underwriter?
C.K.: I think it is important to try a number of different things to learn different angles of the business. So, if you look at my background, I started on the broker side, which gives me a unique perspective when I’m going after deals with members of my team. And when I was on the carrier side, I got involved in the multinational space, the defense base act space, the domestic space and then switched to a focus on the private equity space. I constantly was trying new things and looking at different angles of the industry. And this really broadens your perspective and network and your ability to cross-sell with your peers.
Why was a career in insurance the right choice for you?
C.K.: It allows me to not only be analytical from an underwriting perspective, but also to use my soft skills within the sale. I say to my team a lot that we are production-focused underwriters – we’re not just purely desk underwriters, we need to be out in market 50% of the time. That’s a unique component to a financial services industry role. You also meet so many people all over the world working in different facets of the industry. So, it keeps it interesting. And, like I said, there are so many different avenues that you can go in insurance. On the client side, you could be a risk manager, a broker, a producer or a client executive. On the carrier side, you be an actuary, a risk control professional, a claims professional, an underwriter or a product development professional. It just goes to show that it’s a dynamic industry with many paths to offer.
Chris joins Primary Casualty Senior Underwriter Lexi Bueno and Energy Property Senior Underwriter Emmy Pan as 2025 Business 尤物视频Break Out Award honorees. Read more about Lexi’s career journey here, and Emmy’s career journey here.
Learn more about underwriting and other opportunities at AXA XL. Visit Careers at AXA XL.
