HNW motor MGA Aurum starts soft launch

Aurum Underwriting, a new managing general agency writing high-net-worth motor business, has begun a soft launch.

The MGA has started trading with several brokers in advance of a full UK roll-out in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Aurum is a sister company to Aqua, an MGA backed by Lloyd’s broker RK Harrison. Aqua managing director Jonathan Rouse discussed Aurum’s pending launch with Insurance Times at the annual Biba conference in May.

The new MGA has been launched by Aqua and Ashley Cole, previously head of motor at Hiscox.

Aurum said full details of its products and capabilities will be announced over the coming months. Its proposition will be based on two policy wordings to broaden its underwriting capability.

The MGA’s underwriting platform will support both large private client specialists and brokers who only have a few HNW clients within their portfolios. As a result, Aurum will not impose a minimum level of support.

Aurum said that both itself and Aqua are supported by an experienced claims team and that both businesses are “generously” capitalised to facilitate the execution of long-term strategies.

Cole said: “Our aim is to exclusively provide market-leading cover and service for customers that choose to invest in the expertise of an intermediary and have complex insurance requirements that demand specific consideration.

“In addition to delivering a solution for the most complex of scenarios, Aurum will provide broad comprehensive cover and will handle every covered loss to the highest standards you would expect from such a specialist insurer.”

Rouse added: “We have received an overwhelmingly positive response to the launch of our HNW household products from brokers since our launch.The next logical step is therefore to respond to their requests and apply our flexible approach to the prestige and specialist motor markets.

“By hiring Ashley to create Aurum we have been able to utilise his proven track record across both of our HNW underwriting businesses. This has enabled our team to focus on delivering a suite of propositions that will both provide policyholders with the high standard of cover expected and arm brokers with efficient tools to win more business from the affluent.”