“We wanted to be clear on who we want to be for our coverholders,” said Paul Bleakley (pictured above). “There are a lot of different terms used in the market for businesses offering delegated authority.”
Coverholders are often insurance brokers and many will likely welcome this new clarity. The industry is often renowned for confusing names and terminology.
Bleakley is Berkley Insurance Australia’s (BIA) national Partner Solutions manager. He was explaining to Insurance Business the motives behind this week’s rebranding of its Facilities Department to Partner Solutions.
“Like any business we know what we do, but if it is unclear to customers or potential partners then we needed to be clearer about who we are and what our service proposition is,” he said. “The new name encompasses what we want to be for our coverholders: a partner who provides solutions and support for coverholders wanting to grow or develop their portfolios.”
Bleakley said the rebranded division will continue to focus its efforts on helping partners, like brokers, develop products and distribute them to clients.
“BIA has traditionally been strong in financial lines and general liability classes of insurance and we have supported brokers and underwriting agencies in supporting their product needs in this space,” he said.
However, he said his team can support coverage in other areas including office package policies and in segments like event cancellation.
Some of the offerings can be very specialised.
For example, Berkley has developed what it calls a Hole in One product that provides insurance for charity golf days.
“This is interesting from the perspective of the information required to underwrite the risk including such details as the number of players, the history of a hole in one on that specific hole, the spread of the players’ golf handicaps and the controls for appropriate scrutineering,” said Bleakley.
He said this product supports a small market within the large events space segment.
“We also support one of our partners to provide jewellery insurance at point of sale,” said Bleakley.
He said the introduction of the deferred sales model (DSM) regime for add-on insurance products required a “fundamental redesign” of the product’s distribution process.
“This was achieved through close collaboration between Partner Solutions, Berkley’s compliance team, the coverholder and their compliance team,” said Bleakley.
He said the DSM regime also created particular challenges, including insurance gaps for some customers in the jewellery space.
“The prohibition on selling add-on insurance products at point of sale created a risk that customers who purchase a jewellery item may leave the jewellery store without insurance,” said Bleakley. “Before the customer can insure the jewellery item, they have already suffered a loss event, such as theft - you would like to think this does not happen, but it does!”
This informed the redesign of the product. He said the mutual trust and confidence in the relationship shared by Berkley and this coverholder was important.
“That mutual belief gave us and the coverholder confidence to approach redesign of the product with an innovative spirit,” said Bleakley. “The result was that we were able to stretch our appetite beyond usual conventions and develop a product that solved the customer insurance gap and complied with the DSM.”
Another hurdle, he said, is when “great ideas” lack the “critical mass to justify the full delegated insurance model.”
Bleakley said in these circumstances brokers can work with his firm’s underwriters to develop bespoke solutions.
Bleakley observed how recent years have seen growth in the underwriting agency segment due to the agencies’ expertise supporting the broker market.
“The number of underwriting agencies is increasing and we expect this trend to continue,” he said. “We want to be their partners and welcome their inquiries.”
However, he said there can be challenges connected to these opportunities with agencies.
“The biggest challenge has been the provision of adequate information to support historical performance of the portfolio,” said Bleakley. “We want to support profitable portfolios of business but the absence of supporting information makes the assessment of those portfolio profitability more challenging.”
The Berkley leader explained to Insurance Business some of the rationale behind setting up his division 12 years ago.
“We were of the view that, to properly support our partners, we needed specialist underwriters and support staff to ensure our partners received service as a priority rather than just being an addition to an underwriter’s role,” said Bleakley.
He said this focus on coverholders’ business through dedicated staff has resulted in quicker turnaround of underwriting referrals.
“This improves our partners’ strike rates on quotations and allows for quicker changes to product features to ensure coverage and pricing can remain competitive in a fast moving market,” said Bleakley. “The readily available contact points also results in the technical development of our partners which improves the business overall.”
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