About Underwriting is celebrating its fifth year in business not with a party, but with a new division and a Lloyd’s property binder.
“We have been helping brokers out with very hard to place property risks, as a placement service,” portfolio manager Liz Peach (pictured) told Insurance Business. “And that’s been surprisingly successful for us. It’s largely made up of business that can’t be placed elsewhere – it might be very hard to place strata; it might be EPS risks or property owner’s risks. And for that open market service, premiums start at approximately $250,000.
“So, we have built up quite a significant portfolio of property business without having an underwriting binder. From September, that’s all going to change because we’ve employed an experienced property underwriter to join us, and soon thereafter we’ll have a Lloyd’s property binder in place for SME business so that we can cater to a much larger property audience.”
Aside from the senior property underwriter, also joining the Melbourne-based underwriting agency in the next few weeks are an assistant underwriter and a claims manager. These new arrivals also come hot on the heels of onboarding a senior liability underwriter and a senior professional indemnity underwriter.
Peach highlighted: “In the last few months, we have welcomed five new team members, and the business is growing extremely successfully. I’m excited that we’re able to include a new division, but just generally excited about the growth and the quality of people that we’ve been able to attract.
“We get a lot of approaches from the market from underwriters looking for an alternative, and we have become an employer of choice. We certainly try to be the best employer that we can be, especially in these difficult times. We try to provide our people with a great environment in which they can thrive and be the best that they can be.”
High on the agenda for the Lloyd’s coverholder, which wrote its first piece of business at the end of September 2016, is to provide additional capacity to a “struggling” market.
“We hope that we’ll be hitting the ground running within the next couple of months on property and being able to help brokers who can’t fill a slip completely and where they need additional capacity,” said the portfolio manager. “Some risks we’ll look at on a participation basis; other risks, we’ll be able to look at on a 100% support basis.
“As always with us, it’s case-by-case underwriting. But we’ll be trying to get the message out to the market that we’re open for business on property and be trying to get as much help out there for brokers as we possibly can.”
As for the prospect of a softening market, Peach is of the view that it’s too early to call it.
She explained: “In the same way that the market hardened slower for some areas than others, I think the market will soften slower in some areas. So, those hard to place risks will remain hard to place for a lot longer than some of the simpler, more vanilla risks.
“The additional capacity certainly helps – it brings competition to the market. I guess our message is that while we’re new in property underwriting, we have been placing it for quite a few years. The binder is new for us, and our property appetite will drop down from our previously only hard to place appetite.”
For About, the new division is just a natural progression for the five-year-old company.
“There will be more changes in the future,” Peach told Insurance Business. “We’re a fairly progressive company and we’ve got aspirations for big things.”
“It’s all about the long term,” she added. “We write long-term sustainable business, as well as we engender long-term, transparent relationships with our brokers. We’re very responsive to them, and certainly trying to help wherever we can. The [goal of adding] the new team members is to ensure we continue this responsiveness and to continue our path of organic growth.
“We understand that a lot of risks that come to us may be a little bit more technical than the average risk, but because we have so many experienced underwriters in our team, that’s the sort of thing that we help brokers with every day. We write from the very basic vanilla risk, right through to the very difficult.”
