Tips and tricks to build the perfect presentation.

1. Provide an Understanding of the Business

Take time to fully explain the insured’s activities and the industries they work within. Alongside this, provide contract details and contract values, both for the total contract (TCV) and what the insured is receiving for their aspect of work. Adding Directors experience/CVs will always assist as well.

Ultimately, we are selling the business to an Underwriter and by demonstrating the strengths of a business as well as them maintaining this, we can get good results.

2. Providing a broad description

Alongside each contract it is extremely beneficial to also have a couple of lines commentary on the activities as well as an in-depth description on the insureds ‘Services’.

A lot of the time in today’s world clients will send over their business descriptions from the format of proposal forms and their activity split is left as follows:

- 50% Mechanical

- 50% Electrical Engineering

The above is of course fine but by elaborating on the services in finer detail and explaining your client’s specialism in this field, not only does it increase an underwriters understanding of what they are reading but by the insured explaining in detail it fills our underwriters with confidence based on the technical knowledge demonstrated.

3. Elaboration on any Key Points

When providing information, we can’t assume that an Underwriter would be able to work out the reasoning behind particular figures. For example, big increases and decreases in turnover from year to year is one we have seen a lot due to COVID, but if there are other reasons such as, loss of a particular contract or an influx of employment we should provide this information.

Likewise, if there is or has been a change in the structure of the business, please detail the reasons behind this and the aim of doing this.

4. Claims Information & Risk Mitigation

Unfortunately, many businesses’ deal with claims. When providing claims information, please do it in as much detail providing the claim information, settlements, reserves and steps taken to mitigate the chance of a future similar loss. If there is any correspondence from the holding insurer, this can also assist.

If your client has no claims or losses then your job is a lot easier, however you can still detail their risk management with things such as Terms & Conditions and Health & Safety as this will really put our underwriters at ease with regards to exclusions and limits on liability.

5. Providing a Target

Giving us a target premium will allow us to identify the best markets for the risk and also filter out any markets that this won’t be suitable for due to minimum premiums. Together with this, if there are any markets that have already been approached let us know as this will prevent us from approaching them and speed up turnaround times.

Summary

Submissions really are like telling a story about your client’s business.

The greater detail will assist the Underwriter to fully understand the business and therefore provide an accurate quotation which is both competitive and provides the correct coverage.

By putting the right amount of time into these presentations, you will see the rewards from it.

Written by Callum Sullivan