Insurance is still too often left until the end of a commercial property transaction, limiting the opportunity for brokers to address problems before a deal is completed.
Simon Millar (pictured), director at Inicio Risk Solutions, said property insurance has historically been treated as something to arrange once lawyers, lenders and surveyors have already done much of their work.
"Too often, particularly in the past, it would get to 3 o'clock on a Friday and then someone would remember about insurance," Millar said. "When I first started my career, that was my busiest time of the week, between 3 and 5 on a Friday."
Being part of the process sooner creates an opportunity to do more than provide the insurance required for completion.
"Sooner we do it, sooner we get involved, and sooner we are brought into the team, the sooner we can help," Millar said.
Millar said familiarity with insurance can sometimes lead the industry to overestimate how much clients understand.
"I think a lot of the time brokers are guilty of assuming that the client knows all about insurance because we're so close to the elephant," he said. "Sometimes all we can see is grey."
That creates scope to anticipate problems and find solutions before they interfere with a transaction or develop into coverage issues.
"When a property is purchased, you do a full fact-find," Millar said. "But I personally want to get under the skin of the property. We want to know the construction details, the occupation details, the claims details, what the plans are for the building, is there going to be any redevelopment."
Under the Insurance Act 2015, commercial policyholders have a duty to make a fair presentation of the risk to insurers. Starting that work well ahead of completion allows a fuller picture to be built without the pressure of an immediate deadline.
"Doing it as early as possible, and as thoroughly as possible before you start, sets you up for a long, long relationship, hopefully."
That contribution depends on understanding the risks being placed. Millar stopped short of describing the role as risk management, particularly where smaller firms lack the resources associated with a broader risk-management function.
"The prime thing that we do is go out and we go and find a solution to an issue, to a risk," he said. "To say we are risk managers, that's a much wider, broader definition. I'm not sure whether we could call ourselves that as a small broker. We don't have the resource necessary to do that."
Instead, Millar sees detailed sector knowledge as one way to contribute earlier and more meaningfully to property decisions. Conversations with architects, surveyors and other professionals in the office market, he said, can highlight issues that might otherwise receive little attention during the insurance process. One example is the location of plant and equipment in office basements.
"If they flood, then that takes out all of the computers, the engineering, the lifts, the air conditioning," he said. "And then there's obviously a large business interruption knock-on. Tenants can't use the building."
Identifying such issues before placement creates a stronger basis for discussions with clients and insurers, rather than leaving vulnerabilities to emerge after a loss.
For Millar, the aim is not to expand the role indefinitely, but to make insurance expertise part of the wider property conversation. That means developing relationships with clients and the other advisers involved in a transaction, rather than appearing only when evidence of cover is required.
"People do business with people," he said. "If it's just on a transactional basis, if it's just done through websites, rather than actually properly understanding the risk, properly understanding the sector, I think that's the difficulty."
With commercial property exposed to flood and other catastrophe risks, that distinction matters beyond any single deal. Once insurance is left until the final stages of a deal, the opportunity to influence the outcome may already have passed.
