Last week, Community Underwriting welcomed a new senior underwriter to the team, naming Sydney-based Leeanne Lynch as the latest addition.
Lynch joins Community with more than 15 years of varied insurance experience under her belt, having worked most recently as a senior underwriter for Protectsure.
There, Lynch was instrumental in creating underwriting manuals for the team as well as training fellow colleagues in underwriting approaches, so she’s well versed in finding the right outcomes for clients.
Speaking to Insurance Business, Lynch said she was looking forward to joining the Community team and partnering with brokers to find appropriate solutions for their clients.
“I believe building and maintaining strong relationships with brokers is critical, and can be done by providing solution-orientated services,” she said.
In fact, providing reliable advice to brokers is a top priority for Lynch, who has been recognised on multiple occasions for building strong relationships with external partners.
“Sharing underwriting information and ideas with brokers is a must,” she said, when asked how she goes about forging such meaningful relationships.
“Educating brokers in your policy wordings and offerings, assists them greatly as there are so many wordings out in the market that are not tailored to respond to the needs of their NFP clients,” she said. “If you can highlight the points the brokers need to be aware of, it makes their life a lot easier and you become more of a trusted advisor, rather than just being an underwriter.”
On the flipside, Lynch said there are also steps brokers can take to build stronger relationships with their underwriters and secure more favourable outcomes for their clients.
“If brokers can provide underwriters with enough quality underwriting information, this really assists the underwriter, without having to do further research on the client to find out full business activities,” she said. “When quality submissions are received it saves a lot of time going back and forward with the broker to gain enough information on the specific exposures. This then makes it easier for the broker to receive quote requests in a timely fashion.”
Lynch also said she’s looking forward to working in the not-for-profit space, although she did acknowledge the sector faces its fair share of challenges, which are then felt indirectly by both brokers and underwriters
“The biggest challenge in the not for profit space is clients frequently experience lack of funding and resources to run their charities,” said Lynch.
“For this reason, you need to be able to think outside the box to be able to provide expertise and advice to brokers so that we can work together to come up with solutions that best fit the clients’ needs.”
