Kingsbridge Wholesale - A new view on the market

Written by Charlie Robinson , Head of Wholesale at Kingsbridge Group

At Kingsbridge Wholesale, we celebrated our first year of trade in April. It was a promising and impressive formative year.

The results surpassed expectations. In terms of both the GWP reached and the 1,800 end clients we’ve served through brokers. We’ve also been heartened by the drive and appetite of brokers that we’ve worked with in the first year, and that steels our determination.

Our tenacity is driven by the fact that brokers are at the heart of the Wholesale team. With Zurich’s backing, we work with brokers that have similar values, ambition and outlook on the market.

They include regional brokers as well as global players. Among the more recognisable names are Gallagher, JM Glendinning Insurance Brokers and Global Risk Partners.

Our partnerships with brokers are propelled by three core values.

Mirroring SME Entrepreneurialism

We offer a niche indemnities and liabilities package, specialising in the contractor and SME markets. It caters for customers that have a maximum revenue of ￡500k and up to five employees where we cover over 1,000 job roles.

These are various risks that brokers and insurers struggle to place, especially for the perceived ‘hard to place’ industries, such as offshore, oil and gas, construction and engineering. For example, 33% of policies sold since launch have been in engineering roles.

The brokers we work with are dynamic and innovative. They get close to their customers and reflect back the cover they need for that particular industry or sector.

We mirror that entrepreneurial approach. Our Professional Indemnity (PI) and Liability (Public, Employers’ and Directors’ & Officers’) propositions are based on these specific client needs. The Kingsbridge Wholesale policy package is now tailored to provide the most comprehensive cover a self-employed contractor could ever need.

This is a specialist area in which we have expertise, something that other carriers will struggle to replicate.

These technical risks aren’t easily insured and our offering makes a significant difference to the broker’s ability to secure this business.

In doing so, it also gives them the chance to develop a greater understanding of customers and their needs – both now and into the future – as well as getting to grips with any new risks that may arise.

For us, it’s a continuous challenge to balance thinking like an entrepreneurial broker but act with the discipline of an insurer.

Broker Service

A cornerstone of our business is the delivery of a timely and high-quality service, which adds value to broker partners.

For the majority of our PI traded business, we offer an average time of seven minutes from quote to buy. Simple and effective.

No broker partner is ever left in the lurch. We know that many brokers experience significant delays when seeking cover from established carriers in the market. Sometimes waiting weeks to hear back. That’s not sustainable for a broker.

Brokers need business dealt with there and then. We are designed to meet that need. Our decision-making process is quick and efficient with a same-day turnaround on referrals.

Over our first year, we have expanded the Scheme and Development team. They are the key link between the underwriter and the broker.

The team cuts through the obscurity that brokers deal with elsewhere, offering brokers what they need when they need it. We know perfectly well that our success is dependent on our relationships with brokers, and we have an excellent team dedicated to that.

We support brokers, add value and build a relationship that benefits both the broker and the customer.

“Kingsbridge are super friendly, easy to work with, supportive, and most of all, knowledgeable in what they do. The team are always happy to speak to us, at any time that we call. They always aim to go out of their way to assist, and this just makes it so easy to work with. The rest of the market is unable to provide this level of consistency, and in a competitive market, Kingsbridge have the total edge over their peers.”

Moheen Hassan, Development Executive, Gallagher

Widening Capacity

Many in the market have predicted that good quality capacity will continue to be an issue, especially because of the speciality lines that MGAs typically cover.

For those MGAs that do have capacity, brokers are banging at the door looking for that capacity because they’re having difficulty placing risks themselves.

We are backed by Zurich, QBE and First Underwriting and our capacity is solid in this niche market. We are proud to help widen the capacity of brokers within our market space to over 1,000 job roles.

Further, the capacity we offer will grow.

We will soon announce how our product portfolio will widen with a scheme that will meet the needs of larger businesses SMEs. The new SME scheme will enable us to facilitate cover for businesses with a turnover up to ￡1m and up to 10 employees.

This will enable brokers to broaden the trading businesses they engage with, the capacity that they will be able to offer and the good customer outcomes they can provide.

Watch this space for more information.