[Hiring] Specialist, Product Development - Pet @Nationwide

Role Description

Our work is essential to helping Nationwide build future capability to serve customer needs. Keeping existing products relevant and marketable and building new products takes research, critical thinking, practicality and collaboration. If you enjoy gathering input and information, working independently and on a team and creating innovative solutions for customers, we want to know more about you!

As a Product Development Specialist, you’ll support the development, maintenance, analysis, filing support, and implementation of insurance products, forms, endorsements, and related product documentation. You’ll conduct research, draft, coordinate, analyze, and execute product changes across the Pet portfolio. You’ll also work across product, regulatory, compliance, legal, pricing, underwriting, operations, and technology partners to help ensure product changes are market-responsive, operationally sound, and compliant with applicable requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Maintains and updates policy contracts, endorsements, forms, and related product documentation to support market, business, and regulatory needs.
• Reviews product language for consistency across forms, endorsements, and products; identifies gaps, conflicts, or implementation risks and recommends corrections.
• Conducts competitor, filing, and market research to identify trends, best practices, and opportunities for product enhancements.
• Drafts and revises product language, state variations, filing support materials, business requirements, and implementation summaries for new and existing products.
• Supports responses to filing objections, regulatory questions, and other product-related inquiries by gathering facts, researching precedent, and coordinating with business partners.
• Partners with Product, Regulatory Solutions, Compliance, Legal, Pricing, Underwriting, Operations, and technology teams to support compliant and timely implementation of product changes.
• Tracks deliverables, approvals, version control, and implementation dependencies across assigned initiatives; escalates issues and risks as appropriate.
• Prepares analyses, summaries, and presentations that translate complex product or regulatory topics into clear recommendations for partners and leaders.
• Performs ongoing review of product performance, regulatory feedback, and operational learnings to improve product quality and consistency over time.
• Develops repeatable tools, templates, and documentation that improve product development discipline and execution.
• Works independently on defined assignments and moderate-complexity analyses.
• Supports larger product initiatives and may manage selected workstreams or components of a filing or implementation.
• Exercises judgment within established frameworks and escalates highly complex, ambiguous, or enterprise-level decisions to more senior product leaders.
• Builds relationships across functions and contributes to team effectiveness through reliable execution and thoughtful analysis.
• May perform other responsibilities as assigned.

Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree in business, insurance, finance, economics, legal studies, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• INS, AU or similar designations preferred.
• Typically, five or more years of experience in insurance product development, product analysis, forms, filings, regulatory, compliance, underwriting, or related analytical work.

Requirements

• Proven knowledge of property & casualty lines of insurance, home office and field practices and procedures.
• State filings and rating bureaus, policy provisions, rating/classification manuals and state insurance department filing requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze the effect of changes on Personal/Commercial lines' operations.
• Ability to prepare field implementation instructions, insurance department filings.
• Effective verbal/written communication skills.
• Able to use personal computer and related software and work with complex spreadsheets.
• Other criteria, including leadership skills, competencies and experiences may take precedence.

Benefits

• Medical/dental/vision.
• Life insurance.
• Short and long term disability coverage.
• Paid time off with newly hired associates receiving a minimum of 18 days paid time off each full calendar year pro-rated quarterly based on hire date.
• Nine paid holidays.
• 8 hours of Lifetime paid time off.
• 8 hours of Unity Day paid time off.
• 401(k) with company match.
• Company-paid pension plan.
• Business casual attire.
• And more.