President and CEO of TruStar Daniel Moses (pictured), recently spoke to Insurance Business about the role MGAs play in a hardening market, explaining that their biggest asset is having an open mind with respect to risk and a willingness to listen.
“There are so many competitors that have legacy challenges they have to work through,” he said. “As a new MGA we don’t necessarily have any of those and hope we can learn from our experiences, so we don’t develop them.”
TruStar prioritizes having an experienced and trusted underwriting process. The specialist MGA entered the market in 2017, with distinct product lines in the commercial, professional, and financial space.
“We are underwriters through and through and have carved out specialty areas where we can deploy a high level of understanding of risk exposure and apply a solid underwriting approach to create a meaningful relationship with brokers, clients and partners,” said Moses.
The emerging MGA aims to create a trustworthy experience for brokers and policyholders. “That’s our primary goal and we do that by prioritizing experience on the service and technological levels to create an element of trust among our brokers and partners that provide the capacity to allow us to run business on their behalf,” he said.
“We try to look at risk holistically,” Moses added. “Gone are the days of traditional checkbox underwriting. With additional information and an open dialogue, we can find an opportunity to put together a solution for a more challenging account.”
Uncertainty from the pandemic has also created challenges with respect to policies and claims, and Moses emphasized the importance of asking the right questions for accurate risk management.
“In our commercial line space, we write a lot of construction, and had to question what would happen if a site was shut down, what losses would be generated due to lack of staff or exposure to natural elements,” he said.
“In our professional lines space, we write a lot of E&O for financial advisors - the uncertainty that trickled down created a lot of swings in the investment community and, as a result, investment advisors had to deliver difficult conversations with clients.”
The industry has had to react very quickly during the pandemic - language was modified and hard coded in policies to allow for some uncertainties and risks to be mitigated. All of the above was a learning lesson for a new player like TruStar, and now that the dust from the pandemic is beginning to settle, the MGA can focus on strategies to promote growth.
“We’re writing a lot more general casualty and specialty casualty business which is something we want to continue to develop in our commercial lines space,” he said.
Going forward, investing in technology, people and product development will hopefully translate to continued growth, he said. This includes additional professional lines and plans to continue to grow its D&O business.
“We’ve been fortunate with the support we’ve received and we’re going to continue to invest in growing our team and adding diverse underwriting talent to make our approach to risk stronger and more stable,” said Moses.
