Insurer selection

Published: Thursday, 8 February 2024

Ntegrity has connections with almost fifty insurers, as well as access to Lloyd’s.

How do we decide which insurers are right for your firm?

Financial stability

We work with ‘A’ rated insurers as a minimum and monitor their financial strength ratings with insurance industry standard agencies such as Standard & Poors and A M Best. This provides reassurance that your insurer is less likely to fail mid-policy, leaving you with no cover and perhaps having to pay another premium.

Why is this relevant? Professional Indemnity insurance provides ‘long tail’ protection which may need to pay claims several years after they are first notified to Insurers. Policyholders therefore need to know that their Insurer will be in good financial health for some years to come at the time of settlement, and not just when you are first arranging cover.

Insurer risk appetite

Most insurers segment their interest and will set out to cover specific professions, and profiles within each business. All Insurers have a unique risk appetite driven by their own past experience of claims against the profession or derived from specific types of work.

We nurture strong relationships with underwriters daily and proactively meet with insurers to ensure we know the nuances of their appetite. This guides us in knowing which insurers are the most likely to quote for your business.

Service levels

We look for Insurers with experienced and knowledgeable underwriters who provide swift and informed responses to quote requests and service queries.

Having a consistent underwriter relationship to deal with your renewal year on year helps them get to know your business and its risks (particularly if you have claims or undertake high risk work). Having rapid access to underwriters is invaluable when the need arises to discuss changes in the policyholders business that may affect the risk.

Claims response

When you face a claim, you would like a quick and positive response from the insurer. Where an insurer is slow to respond or isn’t being helpful with a claim, this causes uncertainty and raises stress levels.

We have found from experience that Insurers who have ‘in-house’ claims support often provide more pragmatic responses, compared to others who outsource the work to claims management companies.

Identifying Insurers who increasingly raise objections in their claims handling approach informs our brokers to exercise caution when considering the Insurer for further opportunities.

Policy coverage

We look in detail at the policy wording and compare it to others:

Is the policy wording compliant with your regulator’s requirements?
Is it broader or restrictive in any way compared to the past year?
Are there any special policy enhancements or benefits such as access to legal helplines?

Predictability of premiums

No business likes unpleasant surprises and having to budget for wilding fluctuating premiums can be challenging.

Sometimes when rare circumstances arise such as a pandemic, a financial crash, war or a natural disaster causing global losses, the entire insurance market will react in reviewing premium rates and ongoing appetite for continued involvement.

Most insurers have well established mechanisms for assessing risk but when they get it wrong with too little premium being gathered to cover the claims faced, it can result in widespread price or cover corrections, or both.

We look for Insurers that offer a stable commitment to PII for the professions we work with and demonstrate consistent stability to premium setting as much as possible to avoid surprises.

Competitive rates

If your existing insurer quotes are in line with our observations of the wider market, there are benefits in continuity particularly for businesses with a regular flow of potential claim notifications.

We monitor benchmark premiums by profession, so we know what other insurers offering comparable cover are quoting.

Where the premium quoted by your insurer is out of line with the market, we approach other insurers as well as encouraging the incumbent to improve their offer.