Alison Williams, managing director at Prestige Underwriting, explains what brokers can expect from the MGA in the coming year and outlines key trends impacting the MGA market
How is Prestige continuing to develop service levels to match and exceed broker expectations?
We endeavour to make trading with Prestige Underwriting as friction-free as possible. While we invest heavily in system development to increase our auto-rate quotability, we do not hide behind a system. The nature of the business we write often needs human intervention, particularly for non-standard and non-fit. Our exceptional, highly experienced underwriting team is known for its proactive, can do approach.
Ease of accessibility to our underwriters and decision makers is often quoted by our broker partners as one of our USP’s. Brokers can contact us via phone, email, online chat or through our portal.
We pride ourselves on our willingness and openness. We listen to our brokers’ feedback and evolve our offerings and service to ensure we meet and exceed their expectations.
What is Prestige doing to take existing broker partnerships to that next level?
Our motto, “partnership is the best policy”, reflects our commitment to building transparent partnerships with our brokers and insurers. We actively seek feedback on our service and product offerings. To assist our brokers, we also seek insights and emerging trends on the current state of the non-standard market and share these learnings.
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We categorise our brokers to ensure they have access to the right contacts, regardless of the size of their accounts. Regular contact with our broker partners, whether it be face-to-face or teams calls, is crucial.
Teams has been invaluable for maintaining regular, personal contact with partners, but it is not a replacement for in-person interactions. We also send regular mailings to our broker partnerships.
We are specialists in non-standard business and the nature of the business requires an experienced and accessible underwriting team. Within our broker categorisation, we have acorn brokers, who have a named underwriter who can help support the broker of their account.
Concern over the prospect of removal/changes to capacity arrangements is still very apparent in the MGA market. Should brokers have any concerns about the capacity arrangements at Prestige?
We are fortunate to have strong multi-year capacity arrangements with three A-rated insurers. We are not complacent and work closely with each to ensure we are delivering to meet their KPIs. Our growth has often surpassed the initial expectations of capacity partners, so we also keep channels open to source additional and complementary capacity as needed.
What is Prestige doing to attract, develop and retain talent? What do you think needs to be done to attract the next generation of talent?
Our people are our greatest asset. They enable us to be great at what we do, so their professional development is crucial.
To support this, we have established the Prestige Academy. The majority of colleagues complete CII examinations and others complete qualifications, particularly relevant to their role. Each member of the academy is allocated a mentor.
Our pricing and actuarial team in Belfast is supported in completing actuarial qualifications and we offer a pricing and actuarial graduate placement scheme in partnership with Queen’s University in Belfast. We are the only Northern Ireland-based business offering these GI roles and our pricing team is led by a fellow of the Actuarial Institute and Queens Alumni.
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