The appointment decision
Who do youwant managingthis?
Almost every business buys insurance. The ones that end up best protected hand it to someone who understands the business — a trusted person, in a role, for years rather than months.
The alternative
Appoint one Adviser,
then let
them work
Choose the adviser you want in the role, appoint them, let them take your risk to market. One submission, broad insurer access, a complete response.
There's nothing unusual about this. It's how you already run most other professional relationships you have. Your accountant is not re-tendered each March. Your solicitor does not compete for the file each time you need advice. They hold a role, they accumulate knowledge, and the knowledge is what you are paying for.
Insurance is one of the last professional services businesses still buy like stationery. It's also the one where being poorly understood costs the most — and the bill turns up at the worst possible moment.
The whole market, once
One adviser approaching every relevant insurer in the market with a properly built submission, rather than several advisers each reaching a fraction of it.
Accumulated knowledge
Year two starts from what we learned in year one. Nobody is trying to understand your business from a schedule every twelve months.
Standing with insurers
A stable, well-presented account is a better account to underwrite, and it is treated as one — at renewal and at claim.
What happens now
Multiple brokers,
one market
The conventional wisdom is that more brokers competing for your renewal means more competition, and more competition means a better result. The mechanics work against it.
A broker does not provide insurance capacity. They approach insurers on your behalf and ask for terms. Insurers, sensibly, won't quote the same risk twice through two different brokers. So the first broker to reach an underwriter gets that market, and the next one is told it has already been approached.
Put three brokers on the same renewal and the market divides between them before a single quotation is provided. Each returns with terms drawn from whichever insurers they reached first. You then compare those results and pick the best one.
What you are choosing between is three partial views. None of them represents what the market as a whole would have offered, because nobody was ever in a position to ask it.
What appointment isn't
Not a lock-in
Appointing an adviser is not a contract you're trapped inside. It's an instruction to your insurers about who speaks for you, and you can withdraw it at any time.
There is no minimum term, no exit fee and no notice period. If we aren't earning the role, you replace us, and the next adviser takes over the same way we did.
That is deliberate, and it is the discipline the arrangement runs on. When a firm is paid a percentage of the transaction, the transaction is where the incentive sits. When a firm is being paid a fee, the incentive is to be worth keeping — which is the same thing that keeps your accountant honest.
Practicalities
You don't
have to wait
for renewal
A common objection is that there's no point moving mid-term. There is, and it's usually the better time to do it.
Appointment takes effect immediately. We become your appointed adviser with your existing insurers on the day you say so, whatever the renewal date. Your policies do not change, your cover does not lapse, and nothing needs to be re-placed.
What changes is that someone is now reviewing your programme properly, with months rather than weeks to do something about what they find. By the time the renewal arrives we understand the business, the submission is built, and the market sees a considered account rather than a rushed one.
Next step
Send us what
you have
The simplest place to start is your current schedule. We'll read it against what your business actually does and tell you what we see — including if the honest answer is that it's already in good shape.