“The most important or foundational point for a relationship with an insurance company partner is that it's really founded and based on trust, regardless of whatever type of market we're in,” said Leslie Nylund (pictured), national managing director of broking and insurance company partnerships at The Baldwin Group.
She stressed that trust held whether markets hardened, softened, or swung between the two. To underscore that culture, Baldwin deliberately chose its language. “We've made a point that one of our key stakeholders – we call them insurance company partners. We don't refer to them as markets, we don't call them carriers, we call them insurance company partners. I have seen our CEO actually correct people in a meeting when they fall back to old habits and call them a carrier,” she said.
Nylund often described the relationship as a three-legged stool with the client, broker, and insurer needing equal strength. “If we work together in tandem and we're in sync and we're communicating, the stool stands strong. If we don't, it gets really lopsided, and that's where problems arise,” she said.
“Our job as a broker is to be an advisor, a trusted advisor,” she added. “We inform and recommend, in real time, alternatives. We understand their business. Our role is to educate and guide our clients to think more holistically, outside the box, and start our engagement really early.”
Shifts in underwriting appetite and capacity forced Baldwin to adjust how it approached placement. “The first thing that the Baldwin Group has done is we have definitely bifurcated placement,” Nylund said, describing how advisors focused on client and prospect relationships while service teams supported delivery.
The differentiator, she said, was their proprietary process. “At the Baldwin Group, I think one of our best secret recipes is we get out really early, and we go deep. We have a very interesting, and I’m very proud to say, a proprietary and exclusive approach called the Risk Map process,” she said.
The method involves due diligence across business plans, risk infrastructure, contracts, costs, and coverage. “It is a customized due diligence process where we work with clients, prospects, we look at their business plans, we swarm the account, we look at their risk and insurance infrastructure, as well as insight into their coverage, their costs, and the overall program administration,” she said.
That groundwork allows Baldwin to avoid traditional market bidding. “We have an extremely high hit rate. When we are working on new clients, we are winning it through a “broker of record” letter, meaning we don't have to go out to the marketplace. Our conversion rate is 85 percent, and that's since 2012,” she said.
For insurers, stronger submissions mean better results. “What's in it for insurance company partners? They get better submissions. They're not spinning their wheels, which equates to better financial results for them,” Nylund said. One top-three insurer, she recalled, praised Baldwin for outpacing competitors on growth, retention, and quote-to-bind ratios.
Emerging exposures such as cyber, climate, and social inflation are making conventional products less reliable. “Traditional insurance products are no longer sufficient. You really have to, again, think out of the box,” Nylund said.
That requires brokers to shape renewal conversations before they begin. “We partner with the insurers before the renewal, so we shape the narrative, we shape the coverage. We don't just have them buy it, we want them to be collaborating with us and make sure it matches exactly to the exposures that our clients have,” she said.
“We have a mindset that is grounded in trust. We share values. We collaborate. We approach our – it's all about what's in the best interest of serving our clients and preventing any kind of escalating friction,” she said.
To enforce consistency, Baldwin requires annual certification of market security guidelines across all staff. “Our firm has spent meaningful time memorializing all of this in writing, including our expectations and criteria for Preferred Insurance Company Partners, which we utilize when placing a clients program with an insurance company partner,” Nylund said. “We look at their willingness and ability to pay our clients claims; alignment across product lines, industries and geographies, nationally, and locally, and is there consistency in their appetite; the insurance companies’ ability to connect digitally with The Baldwin Group via APIs; and is there contract certainty in their policy wordings to ensure good claims outcomes.
“We have required all our colleagues to certify annually to make sure they understand how important market security is,” she said.
That discipline extends to advising clients on long-term stability, even when the price is higher. “The hardest thing for us as a broker, you can't always sell the lowest price,” Nylund said. One client renewed despite a higher premium after being shown the carrier’s long-term commitment. “The coverages were great. She went back to that client with the account executive and said, this is a really good deal. This is a top insurance company. They're going to be here for the long haul with you. They'll be there through good years and bad years,” Nylund said.
“It has to be a true partnership between both parties,” she said.
