Doing Things Differently ? – What do they really mean

I see it a lot from Insurance MGA’s “we are doing things differently”, Is it attention seeking?, Is it a belief that they are different?, Is it a marketing pitch to appeal to those who want something new? – what I can tell you is, I rarely (if ever) see an MGA who doesn’t have the same tried and tested model:

1)????? Find an insurer to provide them with capacity,

2)????? Hire a claims administrator to allow them to distance themselves from the claim’s outcome.

3)????? Find insurance brokers to sell their “different” products.

4)????? Promote how different they are to their competitors

Now I am not criticising this approach it allows entrepreneurial insurance professionals to create own and generate an income from being an intermediary in the insurance chain.

And here’s the secret, 10 years ago Inperio was that business, we were different (don’t ask me how), we begged and borrowed insurance capacity, we blamed somebody else for claims outcomes, and we depended on courting insurance brokers to deliver our “different” messaging – We’ve even commissioned a stand at an Insurance conference and emblazed it in a 9ft high slogan claiming we were different from our competitor (and yes we used their name, and they were very upset!)

However, while we don’t shout about it anymore, I think our business is actually doing things differently to our peers, we are a real outlier in an industry where conformity is the norm. Some years ago I adopted the phrase in the company “We are Shepherds not Sheep”. The phrase is multi layered, I want our team to do what they think is right, not follow what the competition is doing. I also want our team to think of themselves as being responsible for guiding our business and our policyholders through risks that are presented to them.

Inperio today is a business that can really call itself different for these reasons:

• We are the only intermediary group I am aware of that actually takes real financial risk – of course we have insurance partners – but we are a re-insurer our insurance partners via our Bermudan insurance vehicle that means we have real economic alignment to outcome, we actually earn premium, and we actually pay claims we don’t just make a commission being outcome agnostic as an intermediary.

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• We own our own claims business called Mitre Claims Management , we don’t hide behind other’s when it comes to claims outcome. Good outcomes are our outcomes, bad claims outcomes (they do happen) are our outcomes. Our policyholders and insurance partners have confidence that we can be held accountable and that’s important in a business selling trust and balance sheet protection.

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• We own an insurance broker called Birchin Insurance Brokers Ltd , and while we still have great relationships with the wider broker community – we hear policyholders concerns first hand and we can deal with them. Our insurance broker can’t blame our MGA and our MGA can’t blame the claims administrators we are one group, and we have total responsibility to our partners and policyholders for their experience of Inperio.

We started Inperio 10 years ago to be a real independent (and different) voice. Today I think we can claim that we’ve achieved it, and we don’t need the exhibition stand now to prove it! We remain fully owned by the original management team, and we are actually doing things differently to our competitors.

If your insurance provider is telling you they are different – ask them why – I’d love to know.