Insurers make ‘right noises’ over dual pricing

Broker Network group chief executive Grant Ellis says insurers have responded “positively” to brokers’ fears over dual pricing.

Last month Ellis wrote to insurer chief executives about brokers’ concerns that insurers were maintaining the soft market by offering significantly higher rates to renewal clients than to new clients.

As revealed in Insurance Times, Ellis called on insurers to address the situation “as a matter of urgency”. He said that rates that were increased by 10% to 15% for commercial clients at renewal were, for the same risks, between 5% and 10% lower for new clients.

This week he said that insurers had acknowledged there was a problem and that he was now asking Broker Network members to provide examples of two-tier pricing so he could forward them on to insurers.

“Their response was consistently along the lines of ‘can we have as many examples as possible so we can try and see where the problem lies in our organisation’,” he explained.

“I have written to Broker Network members to get as much information as possible. They [insurers] are making all the right noises.”