Since 1990, Protecsure has been focused on keeping businesses on the move. Joining them in this mission, since 1998, has been Chubb. It’s a partnership, built on a very close working relationship, which is celebrating its 21st birthday this year. It all started in a relatively niche fashion, with Chubb underwriting policies for student laptops.
“The process of underwriting these policies for student notebooks, which we still provide insurance solutions for today, highlighted the potential of what our combined capabilities could offer. This became the catalyst for us expanding into insurance solutions for other equipment types,” said John Leafe, inland marine manager for Chubb in Asia-Pacific.
“It became clear that Protecsure would be the perfect partner for Chubb with Protecsure providing an efficient and effective way to distribute highly transactional business. Protecsure provided its online platform and the ability to manage the claims associated with this business, with Chubb providing the underwriting horsepower,” he said.
“It’s a unique, strong partnership,” said Gabriele McDonald, managing director of Protecsure. “It’s rare for an underwriting agency to hold security with one insurer for more than 20 years.”
Over this time, the relationship has expanded and evolved to cover a significant portfolio, primarily centred around equipment used by businesses that are on the move.
“The appetite around the equipment we insure has broadened significantly since the 1990s. The way people work has changed and the advances in technology have strongly underpinned this change,” said McDonald.
In practice, this translates to Protecsure having an ability to cover an incredibly broad range of equipment types, spanning items as diverse as shipping containers, photo booths, golf carts, prosthetics, simulation games and puppets, just to name a few.
McDonald notes that there is often a gap between the sum insured and the replacement value, which can seriously impact a client’s ability to get back into business after a loss.
“Some equipment gets more expensive as technology changes, not cheaper,” said McDonald. “For example, a new piece of survey equipment may have cost $30,000 a few years ago but the same item new could now be over $50,000 due to advances in electronic componentry.”
Looking to the future, beyond this 21st year milestone, both Chubb and Protecsure remain optimistic about their continued working relationship.
“We’ve been able to work closely with Protecsure, keeping an eye on trends and developments in the market,” said Leafe. “From our side we get challenged regularly, because we often run across things we’ve never seen before. But it lets us look at new assets on a case-by-case basis and develop new offerings in the process.”
“Partnership with Chubb has really allowed us to evolve our business, because they understand what we do,” says McDonald. “And of course, they’ve evolved with us, too.”
