Pros

If you are looking to work for a big company that offers many possible venues in which to grow this company has a little bit of everything for everyone. If you like to work hard you will go very far, but if you decide to "ease off the gas" and try to have a normal family life this is not the best place for you. The company is family run by the Morris family and you most definitely feel this environment permeate the entire corporate structure. Employees regularly attend many corporate sponsored events that are geared toward bringing them in contact with the Morris family. They are excellent hosts and are some of the most hospitable and warm people I have ever met.

Cons

It is very rewarding professionally but the grind does eventually catch up to you and if you are not careful you WILL burn out. There is a lot of internal squabbling that gets tiresome because many divisions compete against each other. This makes for a dynamic that pits you not only against the competition but against your own company. They are very slow to adapt and change to the market and this is the reason why you end up working so much. The persons who are in a decision making capacity are slow to react and if forced to react quickly, it typically turns out to be a knee-jerk reaction that creates more problems. Their underwriting department is notoriously slow and extremely conservative when it comes to assuming risk. The business and underwriting side are in a constant struggle and it can get to the point where you will lose a deal based on the inflexible nature of the underwriters and their apparent lack of ingenuity to work through or around a problem area.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more underwriters and train them ASAP. The underwriting department is composed of very senior underwriters that although very knowledgeable are very inflexible in the way in which the assess risk. They are so fixed in their ways that it makes it difficult to get them to think out of the box for any period of time. The fact that they are all older and there is currently not a structure in place to hire and train new underwriters is very troubling. The industry is changing with the times and the reality is the majority of the risk on any property in the US is already known and has been known for decades thanks to accurate title records. It makes no sense to slow down a process that in reality should be almost automatic.