James McNamara: Face-to-face time ‘hugely important’ for brokers

How is CFC continuing to develop service levels to match and exceed broker expectations?

CFC has been resolutely focused on broker distribution since day one and building partnerships with our brokers is paramount. Fundamentally, making their lives easier is the name of the game. That means understanding their needs, the clients they’re working with and ensuring that our service proposition matches the service they are trying to provide to those clients.

Our proprietary quoting platform is just one example of how we go about this. It gives us a unique advantage in having real time access to granular quotation key performance indicators (KPIs), enabling us to closely monitor and execute against our ambitious service standards day-to-day. It also produces hugely valuable insight on macro and emerging trends, enabling us to react swiftly to changing market conditions and evolving broker needs.

It’s just one of the many tools we use to not only ensure consistent service levels but, more importantly, anticipate what our broker partners need going forward to ensure that we are consistently improving and working to do more for them.

What can brokers expect in the next 12 months from CFC?

Brokers can expect to see more of us over the coming 12 months and expect to hear us asking ‘what can we do better?’ and ‘how can we do more together?’ more often.

Insurance is fundamentally a people business and that is particularly true in the commercial and specialty lines market. While CFC has built an amazing technology platform and introduced innovative new tools to streamline the insurance process to make brokers’ lives easier, we know that face-to-face time is hugely important.

We’re expanding our UK-focused teams to help us deliver more proactive engagement and help evolve our broker relationships to the next level. We recently announced new appointments in our dedicated UK cyber development team and we’re currently building out our regional distribution team, so brokers should watch this space for more announcements about the people they’re going to be seeing a whole lot more of in the coming months.

What are the major challenges facing the MGA market in the year ahead?

One of the most significant challenges facing MGAs, who are firmly entrenched in the commercial and specialty lines markets, is how do we work with our broker partners to identify new buyers.

Rate alone will not drive industry growth like it has done over recent years. As markets have softened, what we’re really seeing at the moment is pure and simple churn as everyone vies for the same business.

Keeping good customers through delivering a great service and a great experience is one thing, but we need to give greater focus to how we can support brokers to identify and drive new sources of revenue.

CFC is pouring a significant amount of effort into doing just this. We have a proven track record of leading the way in developing sustainable new product classes to meet emerging new risk areas, opening up new markets for brokers and giving them the tools they need to sell. A key focus for us now is how we can help them find new customers in these classes so that we’re not relying on price to drive growth.

What technological developments have been implemented at CFC to improve broker and customer outcomes?

Building our own proprietary technology has been central to CFC’s business since day one and we’re continually investing in our digital distribution capabilities to help brokers do business with us more efficiently.

Our Connect platform is a great example. It delivers what brokers need today – a frictionless, quicker and easier experience to get bindable quotes across multiple products in milliseconds. Our sophisticated algorithms can select risks, as well as automatically price, quote and distribute policy documentation without the need for human intervention.

This is a more efficient process for brokers and translates into a smoother customer experience – and while commonplace perhaps in personal lines, it was a ground-breaking initiative in specialty lines.

It also means that our underwriters have greater capacity to deliver the same service levels on the larger, more complex cases, as well as more time to dedicate to supporting our brokers, building relationships and developing new solutions for emerging risks.

Is insuring artificial intelligence (AI) going to be the next biggest exposure?

AI is certainly a hot topic, but we’re not convinced that there is a need for entirely new AI products versus updating existing ones. Most AI right now seems to be an accelerant to existing risks rather than presenting truly novel exposures.

We’ve built an AI diagnostic tool that allows our underwriters to assess different AI models and applications across different industries. This allows them to go beyond just labelling something as AI and understand its nuances and potential liabilities. In time, this could develop into a robust underwriting approach as markets start to see AI-specific losses that they didn’t charge for – which could be within the next five to 10 years.

The key inflection point, we believe, will be when AI companies start to struggle to get standard insurance coverages.