Briefing: Brokers have ‘big inertia’ around cross-selling – but terminology shift could support soft market retention strategies

The UK general insurance (UKGI) market is in agreement.

The soft market cycle has well and truly arrived after first hitting rates at the back end of 2024, meaning that insurers and brokers are having to roll up their sleeves and get creative in order to retain clients in the face of a bountiful supply of attractively priced policies.

With competitive prices and propositions left, right and centre as soft market supply outweighs end customer demand, the fight for new business is a grisly one. This means that many firms – and brokers in particular – are more closely examining their client retention strategies, quizzing each other on how to make customers more sticky.

One retention approach that has largely flown under the radar, however, is cross-selling – defined by Investopedia as an “attempt to sell additional products or services to an existing customer who has made a purchase”.

A broker speaker attending Insurance Times’ exclusive Broker CEO Forum event last week (13 November 2025), held at Winchester’s Lainston House, confirmed that there is a “big inertia within brokers around cross-selling because it’s just a bit more difficult to do” – especially for more generalist businesses, which perhaps do not have the same laser-like focus on a particular industry segment that is more common in the MGA and schemes world.

He made this comment as part of a panel discussion entitled ‘What makes a good insurance broker?’

An insurer representative on the same panel agreed with this stance, commenting that in his experience, brokers typically offered “one and a half to two products per client” – however, he asked delegates whether this volume is enough “if you really, truly want to extend the lifecycle of that relationship with your client”.

He continued: “Rates are off, the market is soft, the number of clients is not growing massively. Is this the time now to do more with the same clients, to retain clients? How do we do more with the clients we’ve got? That will remain as a constant.”

Expertise expectation

The primary reason why many brokers are hesitant to get fully stuck in to cross-selling, according to Broker CEO Forum panellists, comes down to errors and omissions (E&O) risk and not having the same level of expertise across different lines of business – particularly around coverages that are seeking to protect against emerging risks.

The panellists indicated, for example, that this is why cross-selling cyber insurance to try and boost penetration of this product had not been vastly successful to date – although this need is certainly “an area of priority”.

The insurer speaker noted: “It is a confidence issue around expertise.

“A lot of people facing clients are historically more property, casualty [and] motor led. Do they feel comfortable going out and selling [directors’ and officers’ insurance], selling cyber? Can we categorically say that we have offered a solution to a client across all of their exposure, all of their risk? That’s a tricky one to answer with a positive yes.”

The broker panellist agreed: “Is there enough understanding within a broker about the dangers that are out there in cyber to be able to actually have the confidence to sell it? And if you don’t have success to start with, do you then keep going or do you just give up? Which a lot of people have done.”

Changing mindset

The panel confirmed, however, that cross-selling will undoubtedly be a useful tool for brokers to ensure success during these soft market months.

Indeed, when I caught up recently with Specialist Risk Group’s (SRG) director of niches and schemes, Nicola Holmes – who joined the broker from Hiscox in April 2025 – she told me that a central component of her strategy moving forward was to focus on cross-selling in a bid to take advantage of SRG’s acquisition trail and its growing spectrum of specialist products.

The lack of broker cross-selling was a bugbear from her insurer days, Holmes explained, which is a further reason why she is keen to address this opportunity now she is on the broker side of the fence.

“When I sat on the other side, I would always [question] why don’t they cross-sell to other businesses units?” she said.

“You’ve got a lovely private clients team and they don’t talk to the commercial team and cross-sell, so that’s the one thing I’m trying to put into practice. I don’t want us just to think siloed.

“We should be thinking how can we bring more to that client so that clients can’t go anywhere because we do the professional indemnity, we do their commercial insurance and we do everything.”

A schemes specialist sitting on the aforementioned Broker CEO Forum panel commented that maybe brokers need to adopt “a mindset shift” in order to fully embrace cross-selling and the opportunities this tactic can provide.

He explained: “I’ve been in the industry 33 years. For the last 30 of those, we’ve been talking about cross-selling and how we really must crack it. But actually, maybe it’s a mindset shift.

“We should stop talking about cross-selling and start talking instead about complete risk protection and ensuring that the client has that maximum risk transfer available.”

The broker panellist agreed, adding that broker education was vital to underpin cross-selling. As a further tactic if clients knock back cross-selling approaches, he continued, brokers could ask their clients to sign a disclaimer that they were offered further policies to cover their risks, but that they declined.

He suggested that this method would not only cover brokers from an E&O perspective, but could also, in fact, drive sales by demonstrating the importance that brokers were placing on these additional policies to cover clients’ risks.

“You need to have an impatient management team to drive the activity, but also [to] educate your team as to how you get this across to a client,” he explained.

This mindset shift is further evidenced when comparing the UK and US, a consultant panellist added.

He explained how in the States, insurance broking is viewed as “the fourth emergency service” rather than “upselling or cross-selling”. He added: “They just see it [as providing] the fulsome service.”

It makes complete sense that cross-selling is coming under the crosshairs as client retention gains greater urgency.

Granted, retaining existing customers has always been a priority for brokers, but their natural gift of the gab has meant that new business turnaround has always been a reassuring safety net if clients have ever decided to walk away for one reason or another.

Softer market conditions have hit pause on that opportunity, however, meaning that greater creativity, broader collaboration and joining the cross-selling dots has to happen if brokers want to keep profits travelling in the right direction.