Biba 2025: Hiscox UK seeking to improve ‘response times and service delivery’ for brokers

Speciality insurer Hiscox UK is working to improve its “response times and service delivery” for broker partners, according to Gareth Hemming, the firm’s chief distribution officer.

Speaking to Insurance Times at May 2025’s Biba Conference, Hemming provided a few key examples of how Hiscox UK was making changes to its operations to get brokers “a quick answer” and a more “immediate response” to enquiries and submissions.

For instance, the insurer has introduced named underwriters on all £10,000 plus renewals, to better facilitate mid-term adjustments and cover conversations with broker partners.

Secondly, Hiscox UK is reviewing its “first point resolution” in its trading centre – Hemming described this as referring to “when a broker rings up or emails, how much of that [is being dealt with by the] first person who picks it up?”

Currently, Hiscox UK’s first point resolution is at 60% to 70%, Hemming noted, however he wants this figure to be at least 80%.

“It’s not groundbreaking, it’s just the little stuff,” Hemming added. “Be clear what you want and give a quick answer.”

‘Whole customer’ package

Hiscox UK attended this month’s Biba Conference (14 and 15 May 2025), with around 50 staff manning stand C30.

For Hemming, his key message to the event’s broker delegates was that Hiscox UK is a sector specialist and “not a generalist insurer”.

This mantra ties into the firm’s overarching distribution strategy, which it developed in 2024 and then launched in early 2025 to focus specifically on 12 clearly defined sectors – one of which, high net worth, concerns in the personal lines market, while the other 11 sectors are firmly planted in commercial lines.

These include sports and leisure, marketing, media and creative, training and tutors, technology, events and event organisers, consultancy and professional services, charity, not for profit and public sector, specialist and independent retail, health, beauty and wellbeing, trades, construction and engineering and – last but by no means least – property owners and management.

“What’s really important is they are industry segments rather than products,” Hemming told Insurance Times.

“They are customer led rather than product led and we then have all of our products that we will write underneath those segments. The point here is about being clear about the breadth of appetite and being really clear about what we want, rather than what we don’t want.

“We’re really clear that there are 12 sectors that we are specialists in. And for us, specialist is about being expert, having cover and having appetite, which means we can give whole customer solutions more often.”

Hemming added that cross-selling and this “whole customer” viewpoint is vital when navigating softer market conditions – he advocated early conversations with brokers on renewals and new business to determine a “package” for end customers, rather than “breaking it up cover by cover”.

He continued: “For brokers to have confidence that they’re going to work with you on a particular client, they need to know that you want to do it, that you’ve got appetite to do the whole customer and that you’ll make decisions at the customer level. You need to be able to talk about the whole thing.”

When determining its specialist focus areas, Hiscox UK did not simply draw covers from a hat, however.

Hemming explained that the insurer already has “scale” and “capability” in a number of these 12 fields, or – in the areas where it has less scale – the business understands the specialist cover wordings that would be most appropriate for a certain sector based on its existing well known product lines, such as professional indemnity or medical malpractice, for example.

“It’s that combination of cover, expertise and appetite that means we think we know these [sectors] very well and we know them better than an insurer [that] does lots of sectors. And we think there’s room for growth in all of them,” he added.

Schemes growth

Alongside promoting Hiscox UK’s appetite areas, Hemming noted that schemes is another area in which the insurer is quickly growing. In 2025 so far, the business has launched around six new schemes across its specialist sector fields.

Furthermore, the insurer has another five or six schemes in the pipeline to launch in 2025’s second half, Hemming added. Again, some of these schemes focus on Hiscox UK’s ringfenced specialisms, however a couple also take in new product areas, Hemming confirmed.

He said: “There’s a couple that we’re about to launch that are in new product areas, which we are really excited about. That’s where we partner with a broker in something new. So, that’s quite exciting as well.”