Defining appetite and digital networking

Before the August Bank Holiday, Insurercore’s Michael Gaughan delivered a Webinar to the BIBA membership. This Webinar was slightly different than what Insurercore normally provide. It was not restricted to a presentation on the platform and how to best use it in your day to day work life. This time the remit also included education and through BIBA there were CPD points on offer.

Two questions which have increased pertinence in a hardening market and post-lockdown world were settled on. How do Insurers and MGA’s define their Risk Appetite and the centre of Insurercore’s purpose how to quickly and efficiently network online?

How is Appetite defined?

How Insurers and MGA’s define their appetite is one of the first questions that Insurercore as a team grappled with. However, it came with an added wrinkle – how do brokers search for those risks? The conclusion was that Insurers and MGA's usually define their Risk Appetite in terms of specific popular product lines, trades that they are keen on as well as some specific features such as a risk factor. While some will go into very specific details on risk features that are either positive or negative.

This led to one of the first sticking points when building the platform, negative appetite. Information like unaccepted trades is vital to stop both broker and carrier wasting time on dead end enquiries. However, we had to be cognizant of wasting brokers time with poor quality results. If a broker searches ‘Tradesmen’ and has 10 products come back which exclude ‘Tradesmen’, they are unlikely to search again. The answer to this was to allow all the information to be added but only connect the positive appetite to the Insurercore search engine. This married the ways in which carriers display their information and the way in which brokers search for it.

Digital Networking: How does it work?

How to quickly and efficiently network online was an easier question for Michael to answer, it is exactly what Insurercore was built for. One thing that should underpin all professional networking and that Michael focused on is mutual benefit. A relationship has to work for both partners or it will quickly go flat. Insurercore’s design allows users to find that information that allows them to immediately recognise mutual benefit through detailed risk information. Then with detailed personal profiles attached to products, recognising the right person to network with is immediately apparent.

Networking online is going to be more important than ever as the market has to cope with this ever-hardening market and the ongoing fallout from Covid. Networking will have to take a new face, one that is much more digital. While the market will undeniably lose some of the social and relationship building aspects of face to face, digital can more than compensate through its wider net and higher efficiency.

One reason that Insurercore is such a valuable digital networking tool, is that it is a centralised database. Currently, far too much time can be lost scanning individual Carriers websites/apps. An issue that is compounded by tools that are not fit for purpose. Google was not designed to find markets for commercial insurance, it can be akin to looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Conclusion

A hardening market and an unpredictable working environment over the coming months have compounded upon the issues the insurance market faces in its day to day. The near future is going to be a struggle of changing rates and information is going to be at a premium. Insurercore can be your high street in these coming months with carriers shop fronts all in one place.