Nearly all property-casualty (P-C) insurance agents, at some point, have had a policy declined by a standard insurance company. Instead of passing on the risk, they should be looking to the excess and surplus lines (E&S) market, according to Jim Keane, vice president of the Strategic Insurance Agency Alliance (SIAA) MarketFinder.
Keane led a session on using the E&S market at the Satellite Agency Network Group’s (SAN) annual business meeting. Joining Keane in the session were Tom Crawford, director of marketing, SCU Middletown, a subsidiary of CRC Group, and Chris Watrous, regional client relations manager – East, Risk Placement Services (RPS). They discussed how E&S plays an essential role in P-C, filling gaps for agents by providing insurance solutions for hard-to-place risks for which the standard market does not offer coverage.
“A lot of times we think of E&S as one-off risks, but it is often risks that are declined by the standard market due to the size of business, loss history, etc. Maybe you write a restaurant with a dance floor that is open until 2 a.m. and has 60% liquor receipts. Suddenly, that standard risk becomes nonstandard, and you have to look to the E&S world. It’s often a good risk, you just need to make sure to find the right place for it,” said Keane.
Read the full article from the November 9, 2018 Vol. 283 No. 9 edition of The Standard – New England’s Insurance Weekly.
Reprinted with permission from The Standard, Copyright 2018, Standard Publishing Corporation, Boston, MA. All rights reserved.