Brokers and carriers must work together to offer value to customers
Speaking from the event hosted by Intelligent Insurer in Chicago, Riviezzo discussed the value for customers when brokers and carriers work more closely together.
The first panel of the conference’s second day also featured Neeraj Sahni, senior vice president, cyber solutions broking at Aon; Andrew Abolt, senior vice president of the Marsh Cyber Center of Excellence at Marsh McLennan; and Jeff Kulikowski, executive vice president–E&O/cyber for Westfield, as the panel’s moderator.
The group discussed aligning carrier and broker interests to strengthen customer experiences. Kulikowski kicked off the conversation by asking about the challenges for cyber and collaborative opportunities.
Abolt highlighted the importance of transparency and information-sharing in aligning carrier and broker interests, while Sahni and Riviezzo discussed improving customer experiences—as well as partnerships with underwriters—through communication.
“We need buyers who know they can execute risk transfer strategies that will last.” Andrew Abolt, Marsh McLennan
“People can take bad news and good news, but they really dislike surprises, and that’s the challenge in this marketplace, on both the hardening and the softening side,” said Riviezzo. “Early and constant communication is everything.”
Looking further ahead
Abolt turned to the need for standardisation and a more long-term view: prioritising risk mitigation and loss management, while providing customers with useful feedback to boost their insurability and risk profile.
“We want this market to be healthy and sustainable over time, and we need buyers who know they can execute risk transfer strategies that will last,” Abolt said.
“There needs to be a balance between underwriting practices and pricing rates to sustain the market.” Jeff Kulikowski, Westfield
“Helping them understand that and take a long view based on the market is extremely important.”
Kulikowski agreed, adding that there needs to be a balance between underwriting practices and pricing rates to sustain the market.
The value of cyber
Moving on to market dynamics, Sahni shared his insights on explaining the value of cyber insurance and how to increase take-up rate focusing on process-based services and data-driven approaches.
Abolt encouraged offering products that were easier to access and more compelling for a wider sector of the economy, while Sahni raised the disconnect between services offered to middle-market clients and their actual value.
“Each market is different in terms of types of risk, whether it’s tech or manufacturing or healthcare,” Sahni stated.
“You want to target the market that would be the most competitive for that client.”
Claims talk
Riviezzo suggested that brokers should use the soft market to expand coverage and close the protection gap, while Kulikowski put forward that brokers and underwriters should be regularly exchanging ideas on client needs, claims experience and evolving risks through recurring feedback loops.
Underwriters can build relationships through claims interactions, as Kulikowski pointed out. “It’s not the underwriters who have the overall relationship with the client, it’s more the claims folk.
“This is where the underwriting carriers have a chance to build a relationship.”
“We would all love to say ‘I’ve got XYZ as a client’, but we don’t—we meet them once, maybe twice a year, yet our claims teams may be on the phone with them weekly—that is where you can drive the relationship,” he added.
While the panellists agreed that brokers and underwriter carriers had different roles in managing customer relationships, it was clear by the end of the lively debate that the speakers felt both parties were responsible for providing value to clients and as such, had to start fostering a partnership that could evolve with their clients’ needs.
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