Paul Wingfield: Changing distribution landscape among MGA challenges

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

Our business has been built on delivering outstanding service levels, so this has always been the norm for us. We work hard on keeping our turn around at under four hours and target keeping it below two hours, even on complex classes.

What is Chapman and Stacey doing to take existing broker partnerships to that next level?

We have always been open to working with brokers on closer partnerships. Current close partnerships include a couple of bespoke schemes, enabling our brokers to deliver exclusive covers and rates into their specialist sectors.

We have also worked with a couple of brokers to provide white labelled ‘quote & buy’ products, to enable them to service affinity deals they have established.

Every broker is different and has different wants and needs. We are happy to work in different ways to develop stronger partnerships.

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

Challenges for MGAs reflect the market as a whole, so climate-related weather events and the effects on loss ratios, risk selection and pricing remain very important. Also, continuing consolidation and how we all navigate the changing distribution landscape.

What technological developments have been implemented at Chapman and Stacey to improve broker/customer outcomes?

Our approach to technological developments is proactive, which normally means changes are ‘little and often’. So, in a way, if the change is big enough to notice we probably did not implement early enough. We are currently working on ways to enhance the claims journey for all parties and this should have some impact in the coming year.

What is Chapman and Stacey doing to attract, develop and retain talent? What do you think needs to be done to attract the next generation of talent? 

Difficult one!

On a simple level, recruitment, development and retention is about treating your staff well, remunerating properly and communicating clearly the career paths that are available. I hope we already do that well as a business and will continue to do so .

The question of making the industry attractive externally is probably best left to marketing experts!