Karen Jackman, sales director at Geo Underwriting, explains what brokers can expect from the MGA in the coming year and outlines key trends impacting the MGA market
How is Geo Underwriting continuing to develop service levels to match and exceed broker expectations?
We’ve had a real focus over the past year to ensure that as an MGA, we are easy to trade with. We’ve taken feedback onboard and listened to our brokers and have adapted our trading model to support them. We’ve developed dedicated trading teams to support our brokers across our specialisms and we’ve upskilled and cross-trained many of our underwriters to allow us to better support our brokers. We have also worked to make our resources more agile to ensure we can respond effectively during busy periods, supporting both new and existing business.
What is Geo Underwriting doing to take existing broker partnerships to that next level?
Partnerships with our brokers are incredibly important to us and we work closely with them to support them in their growth ambitions too. We have a great example recently of a broker where the composite market removed a scheme facility from them at short notice. They approached us and we quickly identified what a great opportunity it was. Due to the strength of our relationship with the broker and insurer, our flexibility and our expertise in this market, we were able to innovate and build a product matching the broker’s requirements, which allowed the existing customers to continue to be covered and avoid any potential detriment.
The uniqueness of MGAs allows us to be flexible and innovative, work in partnership and react quickly, which ultimately takes our trading relationships to the next level.
What can brokers expect in the next 12 months from Geo Underwriting?
We continue to evolve Geo as an MGA and have been working in the background to join our business together as one cohesive team, to make it easier for brokers to trade with us. A key element of this has been bringing our six specialisms together under one terms of business agreement (ToBA), which streamlines brokers’ experience with us.
As part of this work, we are excited to rebrand some of our specialisms to Geo within the next month. This is a small part of our plans to bring more consistency to brokers and further clarity to our relationship with them and the service we provide.
We’ve also got a brand-new website coming later this year, which will really support brokers with understanding what Geo can do for them, how we can help them and their clients and bring simplicity in getting access to our products and teams.
Most importantly, brokers can expect us to continue to engage with them. We want your feedback and will work closely with brokers to ensure we’re delivering a prompt and reliable service that allows you to unlock some niche markets that perhaps you didn’t realise were available to you.
What is Geo Underwriting doing to attract, develop and retain talent? What do you think needs to be done to attract the next generation of talent?
At Geo, nurturing talent is a huge priority for us and we want to ensure that what we do is meaningful and tangible, making a positive difference for both our people and the brokers we work with alike.
When recruiting, we look outside of the traditional insurance routes to encourage experts from our specialist areas to make the move into our industry with us. They bring with them an abundance of in-depth knowledge and understanding that is worth its weight in gold.
For example, we’ve a master yachtsman working in our marine team, alongside people who sail as a hobby. Our protection tax business also boasts qualified tax consultants and all of our apprentices working in the agriculture team have a farming background. Many of them having grown up in a multi-generational family of farmers are looking for an exciting, alternative career path that still allows them to explore their passion for agriculture.
By approaching recruitment differently, we bring in people to our business who not only understand the product, but have a deep and genuine understanding of the market and the challenges that customers face because they have experienced it first-hand.
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