Commercial liability insurance can be hard to place if a broker has scoured the available markets and not found anyone to write the policy. These types of hard to place policies can include:
- Hot tar roofers
- Hospitality
- Recycling
- High exposure manufacturers (such as makers of critical auto parts)
These requests typically come from two types of brokers: brokers who do most of their business with South Western Insurance Group Limited and brokers who come to the company when their own resources fail them. The first type of broker knows the company well and actively targets these hard to place clients as a good source of business for both themselves and South Western Insurance Group Limited. The second type is more likely to be searching for an unusual request from an existing client. “Generally speaking, we take the hard to place liability requests from these brokers because they can’t place it in the regular market,” said Ghazal Hamid, branch manager for South Western Insurance Group Limited. “They’ll come to us, and we’ll be able to facilitate it.” He cited the example of a plastics plant. They have a relationship with their usual broker, who wants to maintain that good relationship. However, the broker may be able to place only part of their request, for example, the liability, the boiler, and 60 percent of the property. The broker will come to South Western Insurance Group Limited for the stand-alone umbrella policy they want and the other 40 percent of the property. “We treat each class differently,” Hamid said, “because we have a different relationship with each class. It makes sense for the local broker to go domestic with the regular business, but anything that other markets are worried about can come to us.” Hamid said that flexibility and relationships are the strengths that allow them to excel at this type of coverage. “Things are always changing in the industry,” Hamid said. “Flexibility and creativity is key because if we’re static too long, we’re just going to vanish. The marketplace is continually evolving, and there’s always a new product line.” Relationships, the other great strength, refers to South Western Insurance Group Limited’s relationships with their markets. Hamid said that the company has been a managing general agent (MGA) for over fifty years and has used that time to build strong relationships with their Lloyd’s syndicates. “We have a good name in London,” Hamid said, “We have access to many markets in London and a great deal of capacity at Lloyd’s that new or smaller MGAs don’t. This is the primary reason we can excel at hard to place liability policies.”