People

As a company with a mission to provide industry-leading specialty risk management solutions, our success lies in earning our customers’ trust every day. We do that by hiring the best and brightest talent in the industry, fostering a high-performance ownership culture and supporting employees in their personal and professional growth.

Our Mission & Values

Our mission is to provide industry-leading specialty risk management solutions that are convenient, tailored and fill unmet customer needs. As we work to realize our mission, we do so in a way that is sustainable, ethical and aligned with our values.

Our Ownership Culture

At RLI, our talent distinguishes us. We hire smart people, including the best underwriting and claim professionals in the business, make them owners of the business and give them the freedom to succeed. Our collaborative and entrepreneurial culture empowers employees to help customers and develop creative solutions to meet their unique needs.

Our Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

We perpetuate our ownership culture by cultivating an exceptional workforce to deliver excellent customer service and achieve superior business results. Our goal is to attract, develop and retain the best employee talent from diverse backgrounds while promoting an environment where all viewpoints are valued and individuals feel respected, are treated fairly and have an opportunity to excel in their chosen careers. We actively support, and participate in, initiatives led by the American Property Casualty Insurance Association that aim to increase diversity in the insurance industry.

We also have a goal of establishing diversity among members of our Board of Directors reflecting, but not limited to, profession, background, experience, geography, skills, ethnicity and gender. The Nominating/Corporate Governance Committee of the Board is committed to actively seeking highly qualified women and minority candidates, and will include such candidates in each director search it undertakes, including those by third party search firms.

Sustaining a High-Performance Ownership Culture

RLI sustains its high-performance ownership culture through ongoing investments in our greatest assets — our people. Our Total Rewards program is designed to attract the best talent in the industry and we strive to help all employees realize their potential through training, mentoring and professional development.

RLI Total Rewards

RLI employees enjoy a competitive Total Rewards program that includes a base salary or hourly wage; annual incentives for all full-time employees; long-term incentives for management; retirement benefits; and health, disability and life insurance. We utilize various sources, including local, regional and national compensation surveys, to establish competitive pay targets for each position in the company to ensure our Total Rewards program attracts and retains a talented workforce.

An important goal of the Total Rewards program is to promote alignment of employee and shareholder interests, which is achieved through the company’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and long-term incentive plan (LTIP). The ESOP is a qualified retirement plan that provides shares of RLI stock to employees based on the profitability of the company, and the LTIP provides equity-based awards to key employees. Employees at all levels of the organization are owners and collectively, with all other insiders, own 9% of the company.

Work Flexibility

We recognize that priorities such as work–life balance and personal and professional development are important for building a diverse workforce and maintaining a positive work environment. RLI is committed to helping employees balance the demands of work, family and personal responsibilities by offering a variety of flexible work arrangements, as well as benefits such as parental and family care leave.

Talent Development & Succession Planning

Our goal is to make leadership development an integral part of personal career growth and employee engagement, which ultimately supports strong business performance. Our talent review process is focused on putting the right people in the right positions at the right time to build a sustainable leadership pipeline. We support this by maintaining a robust succession planning process to ensure we place the best possible talent in key positions.

Professional Development & Training

We offer educational, training and mentoring resources to all team members to help them advance their careers and/or transition into different roles within the company. We provide a variety of live and on-demand learning and development programs (such as People Exchanging Expertise at RLI, the Underwriter Development Program, the Experienced Underwriter Development Program and Building Better Leaders Program). We also offer an expansive library of on-demand content that provides learning opportunities on a wide variety of topics to support employee personal and professional growth.

Our Career Mentoring Program facilitates one-to-one mentoring relationships that connect employees with leaders in the organization to help employees expand their networks, gain new knowledge and insights and build new skills.

Continuing Education

RLI strongly encourages employees to pursue professional development course work in both insurance and job-related areas. We offer tuition reimbursement for qualifying college courses and cover the cost of most insurance education and professional accreditation programs. Employees can receive a bonus upon successful completion of courses and professional designations.

Employee Engagement & Workplace Insights

We believe in fostering an open and collaborative workplace that encourages employees to take ownership of their performance and development. We consistently track employee engagement and satisfaction metrics, along with other workforce data and insights, to assess the health of our workforce culture on an ongoing basis and make improvements based on employee feedback.  

Every two years, we conduct an employee engagement survey. Results from RLI’s last employee engagement survey were highly positive and exceeded global benchmarks.