The rise of the product led broker

The traditional role of insurance brokers – matching off-the-shelf policies to customer needs – is undergoing a quiet revolution.

Increasingly, brokers are shifting from distributors to designers, crafting bespoke insurance propositions that reflect a deep understanding of niche sectors and individual business risks.

For industry veterans like Stuart Reid, chairman at Partners& and Pikl to name a few non-executive positions, this evolution is both necessary and inevitable.

“It is important for brokers to make [a move to designing bespoke propositions] if we’re to serve our customers,” Reid told Insurance Times. “We should try and align the covers that we sell as closely to what they wish [for] and in which way they wish to cover their property.”

Simon Mabb, head of UK regions at AssuredPartners, echoed this sentiment. He added that this shift in brokers’ focus often coincides with specialising in particular niche markets.

“I definitely see brokers getting more involved in that [product design] side of things,” he said. “Brokers have worked out that if you want to be successful, become a specialist.

“If you’re a specialist, you bring your specialist knowledge to that marketplace and you build solutions into products.”

While the concept of specialist brokers is nothing new, what has changed is the scale and mainstream acceptance of this approach. Mabb noted that the product led broker, once a niche business model, is now becoming more widely adopted in UK general insurance – helped in part by more agile capacity partners.

“MGAs are probably more adaptable to doing things than perhaps insurers are,” Mabb continued. “With insurers, you’re looking at a bigger number of people for [product approvals] to get through, where MGAs are more nimble and agile.

“You can get to the decision-maker quite easily [at an MGA].”

This nimbleness has enabled brokers to take a more proactive role in product development, often going so far as to pre-test potential policy extensions or products with target customers before taking them to market.

At AssuredPartners, for example, Mabb ran a social media poll last month (March 2025) with trade association the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) to gauge interest in a proposed product and test how critical its cover would be to a business’s ability to survive a relevant incident. This received around 100 direct customer responses.

Mabb said this level of insight has led to brokers asking for more from their capacity providers, as well as driving increased innovation in product design from brokers themselves.

“Brokers are demanding more [innovation] and wanting those solutions because they’re talking to their clients more,” he said.

Ear to the ground

This customer insight that Mabb described here is at the heart of brokers’ product led evolution.

Reid argued that “if there’s a criticism of insurance, we tend to sell what we think the client wants, not necessarily what the client actually wants”.

However, the product led model puts listening first – gaining insight through close client relationships, conversations with trade bodies and a genuine effort to understand clients’ businesses from the inside out.

“Listening to a client and listening to a trade body or industry to get under the bonnet of that specialist cover is the first thing you must do because they know more about their specialism than we do,” Reid said.

“Attuning the insurance as close as we can to what they require will result in happier clients [that] stay longer – and generally will pay more [for covers].”

But designing products is only half the battle. Persuading capacity providers to back brokers’ ideas remains a challenge.

“There’s a very good reason why boilerplate is the preferred option for most insurers,” Reid explained. “Their algorithms, their claims ratios and their underwriting statistics are all based upon a very finite, general wording that they’ve had years of experience of.

“Moving into more specialist [fields is riskier for insurers] because it’s getting into areas that they may not have been involved in before.”

Specialist schemes

Of course, crafting more bespoke propositions demands a higher level of expertise – and that means brokers are having to invest more heavily in specialisation. But that does not necessarily require an overhaul of traditional skills.

“I don’t think it’s a great leap,” Reid said. “Certainly, in my history, it wasn’t that we needed to recruit new [skills], but just re-educate existing [ones].

“[Product design] definitely needs different skills [to distribution], but ones that are easily learned.”

Mabb agreed, noting that many of these newer broker specialisms have developed organically, starting with a single client win and growing into fully fledged schemes.

“Brokers are quite adaptive in that regard,” Mabb added. “They’ve become more knowledgeable in certain areas. They build their specialist knowledge up and then that enables them to win more clients because that customer trusts them.

“They pick up one client and think ‘oh, that’s actually really good’ and suddenly a scheme’s developed.”

Reid goes one step further, arguing that “every single thing that a broker does should be a scheme”.

He continued: “Even if it’s commercial combined, general business or office insurance or directors’ insurance, I think it should be looked at as a scheme,” he said. “Certainly, when I sold my business, every single area was a scheme.

“Obviously it demands defining what a scheme is, but it’s something that you do with expert knowledge, with bespoke terms, which attracts the best of clients.”

Passion for products

As for the future, Mabb believes brokers will widen their expertise beyond narrow niches, creating ecosystems of related specialisms.

“You might have brokers with multiple specialisms [that] take that specialism and then look at the ecosystem outside of it,” he explained. “So, they might become an expert in coach and bus [insurance], but then gravitate to couriers off the back of that business.”

For Reid, it is all about finding the right passion for a particular sector or niche – not just experience. This, he believes, will be the main driver of success.

“The best specialisms that have worked for me are where the people who look after that particular area are themselves passionate about that particular area of business,” he said. “They don’t just do it at work. They do it at home as well and know so much more than your general person.”

And in a market where competition is fierce and customer expectations are rising, the product led broker is not just a trend – it may just be the blueprint for broking’s future.