Inefficient prioritisation by insurers harming broker response times

Inefficient prioritisation by insurers is reducing response times to brokers, Mike Latham, chief executive at Verlingue, has warned.

Latham said that insurers tend to deal with requests in date order and that ”sometimes we’re going to renewal meetings with gaps in reports because we’re still waiting for responses which we’ve asked for in plenty of time”.

He made the claim following the release of Insurance Times’ Five Star Rating Report: Commercial Lines and Personal Lines 2024/25, which evaluated the service brokers have received from their insurer partners over the course of the last year, based on five key service metrics. 

These metrics include claims, underwriting, quality of cover, documentation and relationship management – within commercial insurance, relationship management and underwriting recorded the joint lowest average scores overall.

Speaking during the Insurance Times webinar Reaching the regions: Driving success through local broker-insurer relationships in UK commercial lines, held in association with Zurich on 8 May 2025, Latham said: ”What we find is when we submit those proposals early to insurers [they] tend to deal with things in date order.

”An inquiry from another broker that’s been submitted probably many weeks after ours will probably be equally prioritised, which is a challenge for us.

“Insurers working in date order when looking to manage their workloads and resources is a problem for the industry. We’re not casting blame, we’re just talking about how it feels on this side of the fence.”

Zurich response

In response, Morgan Lyons, head of retail commercial at Zurich UK, explained that his firm had a strategy to improve transparency.

He said: “Five years ago, we certainly didn’t have that transparency and line of sight at case level in terms of how quickly we were responding.

“Having that data and that insight really means you can shape a strategy around what that holistic service delivery looks like to the brokers and where the gaps are.”

He also said his firm’s teams work with brokers to ensure renewal terms are in place in advance.

In the Five Star Rating Report: Commercial Lines and Personal Lines 2024/25, Zurich ranked among the highest when it came to delivering high quality commercial lines service for brokers – receiving the maximum five star score for overall service across all five of the report’s key metrics.

Lyons said: “We’ve got real line of sight on when renewal terms have been issued, ensuring that we are having those discussions as early as possible.

“We’ve encouraged our teams to have those renewal surgeries with those key partners that we do business with, sit down and understand the demands that their clients have.”