Briefing: A Cockney’s guide to nicking business

I am very proud of the fact that technically I’m a Cockney – born in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and therefore within the sound of the East End’s Bow Bells, a requisite for this label.

That said, I probably stray from most of the usual associated archetypes – and it is easy for me to be reminded of that. Having mentioned my Chartered Insurance Institute qualified status to some hardcore east enders, my loitering mum decided to interject airily: “Well, you were born in the private wing darling.” Nothing like your mother to ruin your street cred!

But my entire career has been surrounded by that particular vernacular. And it only dawned on me recently just how much this has impacted the way that I – and many around me – go about our business.

A prominent example would be the language that we use. It is never “winning” a risk or “securing” one, but rather – usually with hands rubbing together in glee – “we nicked a lovely bit of business today”.

This terminology simply adds to what is the great game of broking – that you can and do regularly take business off other brokers and, with almost equal regularity, they take it back from you too.

That churn is obviously healthy for competition and keeps us on our toes. It is also symptomatic of the fact that broking has to be this way because there are very few new risks in the market. This is especially true given the somewhat moribund economic environment we currently face.

However, there must be some fundamental, universal rules about how we acquire risks. And I have had a stab at listing what these should be after much head scratching and gathering market feedback. Here we go…

• The sovereign point, lording over all others, is price. This will likely always be the primary decision point for most clients.
• Better customer service. A client will move their business if a broker has either provided bad customer service or if your customer service is demonstrably excellent.
• Better or more flexible terms – or you have unique requirements that require niche distribution representation.
• A ring-fenced, closed market facility, such as representing specialist occupations, which are very hard to steal business away from and the risks might be so well placed that it would be wrong to prise them from such a scheme.
• Better marketing, brand equity or recognition and greater resonance with the target audience – or simply the offering of a fluffy meerkat.
• A client has been – or considers they have been – fouled on a claim and, therefore, will never use that broker or insurer again, so is in the market for an alternative following a bad experience.
• Have a personal relationship or have cultivated the client to the point where they abandon their broker on the basis of a friendly and sympathetic voice. This includes the importance of listening to clients – an underrated superpower.
• Affinity schemes and larger potential benefits from discounted multiple policies. For example, Admiral with its motor, travel and household offering.
• A super slick new system or a seamless digital journey that makes life much easier for customers and is almost unavoidably attractive to use.
• Naïve underwriting capacity which allows a combination of competitive, flexible underwriting terms and no losses on your slate as yet. Actually, this is unsustainable and is short-termism at its finest.
• Embedded policies that are hard to strip out.

There are probably more general consensus rules on acquiring risks – and, certainly, there will be variation or shades between these different points – but, for me, these mark out the fundamentals.

If you also accept these fundamental rules as the basis of how all new business is acquired – or nicked – then the market can be mastered and brokers can build systems and tailor offerings accordingly.

No room to cheat the system

But, if we are agreed on these universal laws, it rather grieves me when I read about the latest insurtech or some other aggressive stance where a professional says they are going to enter the market and upend it. How many times have we heard this?

The latest Silicon Valley bro, seeing the glittery and juicy prize of many billions in premiums, eyes the insurance industry up as if we are some sleepy backwater. They can almost taste the caviar and are firing up their imaginary Learjet aircrafts with how easy it will be to upend us conservative insurance folk.

Yet you cannot cheat the system. Underwriting discipline is the golden ticket to sustainable growth, as is a consistent level of customer service and your market orientation generally.

This, of course, means there is space for agile newcomers.

Teams that have fallen foul of M&A projects, ambitious cohorts and those that can leverage their experience should take heart from the fact that – the power of incumbency aside – you are only ever one phone call away or one happenstance meeting from nicking a juicy piece of business from a sleepy broker because of one of the aforementioned fundamental traits.

Happy hunting.