This article was created in partnership with SIGNAL Underwriting.
When Alexander Blair-Johns (pictured) began his career in insurance in 2002, client care was not top-of-mind for all underwriters.
“Back then, it was a different world,” he recalled. “Underwriters didn’t put much effort into customer service, and brokers didn’t necessarily expect it.”
But insurance, like many other industries in the past two decades, has seen a shift in what clients expect from their service providers. A recent McKinsey & Company survey of North American insurance customers confirms that delivering winning customer experience can translate to both financial success and operational efficiencies for insurance businesses.
Putting top value on proactive customer service is natural for Blair-Johns, CEO, class underwriter at SIGNAL Underwriting. “We have three customers here. Our brokers, our insureds, and the insurance companies that we underwrite on behalf of,” he said. “We want to make sure that we do right by each of them.”
Part of providing best-in-class service to customers includes quick response times and real-person service.
Blair-Johns’s team prides itself on promptly answering broker phone calls and emails and getting them what they need as quickly as possible.
“One of the first things new SIGNAL employees learn is that we’re a customer service business,” he added.
If the firm decides against taking on a particular risk, SIGNAL Underwriting will immediately notify the client to ensure they can seek alternative solutions.
“Having been a broker, I know that there’s nothing worse than sending a submission to someone, thinking you’re going to get it and then, three weeks later, they tell you ‘no’,” said Blair-Johns.
For more complex journeys, such as buying a policy or resolving an issue, more than 70% of McKinsey respondents preferred working with a real person rather than an online service.
Blair-Johns highlighted his own firm’s emphasis on keeping business person-to-person. “We’ve made a conscious decision not to have an online portal because we want our underwriters to work with our brokers, and our team members value those connections.”
When dealing with complex client matters, SIGNAL Underwriting sets itself apart by providing broker partners with custom solutions, putting together coverages from different products to ensure all bases are covered.
Offering an example of how SIGNAL integrates services, Blair-Johns recounted a case where they leveraged their expertise to identify multiple coverage areas for a client running a medical clinic.
“Through our in-house products, we were able to write the general liability and medical malpractice exposure with our healthcare product, the financial loss with our miscellaneous E&O product, and the clinical trial site exposure in our life science product,” he said. “This gave our broker partner a one-stop solution.”
This is also why the team is always looking to improve its product offering. Its new in-house underwritten standalone clinical trial product for sponsors will be available soon and it has recently added property, crime and equipment breakdown to its existing products:
Emphasizing SIGNAL’s commitment to white-glove service, Blair-Johns noted that although the client did not initially request multiple lines of coverage, the team consistently strives to go above and beyond to ensure clients are comprehensively protected.
“We look at all different aspects of a risk and take care of people,” he said. “It’s not just ‘hey, you sent me a submission, so I’ll give you exactly what you want back’. It’s ‘hey, you sent me a submission and I think I’ve identified some areas where we could better serve the client’.”
“Then, the broker looks great to the client, and the client is happy. It’s a win-win,” said Blair-Johns.
