Berkley Insurance Australia (BIA) has earned this year's Insurance Business Australia (IB) 5-Star Professional Indemnity (PI) awards. In an interview with IB, BIA CEO Tony Wheatley shared how the company managed to stay on top despite a difficult Australian insurance market.
Aside from being named a 5-star professional indemnity provider in Australia, BIA achieved top scores of four and five for its policy in the challenging design and construction space across SMEs' D&O and E&O for medical, construction, and multinationals.
Wheatley explained that the company remained on top despite various challenges over the years, thanks to its reputation for responsiveness.
“The secret is pretty simple, yet seemingly hard to replicate,” Wheatley told IB. “Answer the phone, respond to emails, and call people back. The underlying principle [is dealing] with people the way you yourself would want to be dealt with.”
Focusing on PI, a core part of BIA's business, Wheatley said the company was able to deal with various PI challenges over the years while keeping rates at reasonable levels.
“Our aim is to maintain rate increases at modest levels to ensure we allow for increasing costs and provide a level of certainty to our customers,” Wheatley said. “BIA needs to provide systems and processes that 100% support the objective. Single point-of-entry IT systems, delegated authority, simplified referral processes, and one-touch document production are all must-haves to provide underwriters the ability to turn things around quickly.”
You may read more about BIA and find the rest of this year's IB 5-Star Technology award winners by reading the IB 5-Star Professional Indemnity 2022 report.
