Area assistant vice president – inland marine
RISK PLACEMENT SERVICES
Specialty: Inland marine
Chelsea Bergen entered the insurance industry on the underwriting side. After 10 years, she wanted to try something different while continuing to build her expertise in the inland marine space. Having developed a longstanding relationship with Risk Placement Services (RPS) as a trading partner, Bergen approached the firm.
“It felt like the perfect fit,” she says. “They gave me the opportunity and support to see it through. Four years later, I continue to build out our inland marine and ocean marine book of business while adding members to our team and teaching them about the marine specialty. It has been extremely satisfying to work within the same discipline that I started with on the underwriting side, but now being on a different end of the negotiations.”
Bergen believes her success as a broker lies in her ability “to truly understand the risk and anticipate concerns or questions from the underwriting side. Much of the hard-to-place business will be reviewed by several layers of management on the carrier side. If you can address major concerns from the beginning, you have a much better opportunity to start a dialogue around how we can place the risk versus the reasons why the markets want to decline.”
