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It’s tough running an Insurance business in 2019.

If it’s not Brexit, Software house problems, Regulation, Governance or HR concerns, it will be something else.

For many brokers managing their Insurer relationships can be some way down the ‘to do’ list. The days of a friendly and ‘pliant’ Inspector visiting you once a month are long gone. Brokers often need to take the initiative to meet their Insurer partners regularly and make sure that are 'managing' the relationship.

We are often asked whose job is it to maintain profitable and viable business for the Insurer? We would argue that it’s a joint effort and the rewards for demonstrating to the Insurer your passion for working collaboratively will pay big long term partnership benefits.

So, how important is regular dialogue with your Insurer partners and where should your focus be in these discussions?

Here are a few ideas for you:

1)   Have you thought about articulating a five year plan / vision for your business? Insurers love to know where a broker is going and where the current and future focus will be.

2)   Within the plan make sure you highlight any areas where you are helping the Insurer from an anti-fraud, risk identification perspective. Don’t be shy about demonstrating any enrichment (pre or post quote) initiatives you are doing. Often insurers are unaware of how hard brokers work to protect their book from ‘undesirable’ risk.

3)   Do you know how each of your Insurer accounts perform from a loss ratio perspective? Take the time to build a clear picture of how each product line is performing with your insurer partners. Getting claims data is not always easy but if your Insurer partner knows that you are keen to work collaboratively to improve loss ratios they will respond positively.

4)   Once you have the claims data from the insurer you will be in a position to ‘triangulate’ against your policy data and build a clear picture of which accounts are performing exceptionally, performing well or where performance needs remedial action. This is where data becomes insight. Insurers will welcome a discussion about initiatives to drive more business into segments that have been identified as profitable. Equally they will welcome discussions about how performance can be improved. In our experience we find that nearly all accounts fall into the 33/33/33 rule. 33% of the book is performing well and Insurers are happy. 33% is performing reasonably and 33% needs improvement.

There is never a substitute for face to face meetings with Insurers. Being armed with the insight from data analysis of your accounts will give you a real head start to maintaining mutually profitable business for you and your Insurer partners.

Glenn Hirchfield advises Private equity firms on transactions in the UK Insurance sector and has his own consultancy practice (ALJ Consulting)