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When you say that you expect your business to grow by up to 40% in the next two years, after already enjoying significant growth, that’s a pretty bold statement to make.
But Tom O’Connor (pictured), CEO of CLS Risk Solutions, is fairly confident that he can make that call.
“We now think that even though the business has grown quite quickly in the last several years,” he said, “we’ve got really a great opportunity to make it grow quicker over the next couple of years as well. We think we can grow the business by about 40% over the next two years.”
And that growth is all about brokers according to O’Connor. CLS Risk Solutions is the arm of CLS that deals with property, and has a range of niche products that brokers often aren’t aware they can offer to their clients.
Their products include things like right to light insurance, environmental insurance for contaminated land, structural indemnity and insurance against planning permissions. So now the team is focusing on pushing these products out to brokers, working with them to make developers aware of what they may need.
“We know that there are lots of brokers that we don’t work with today who had had a number of cases they could have referred to us, but they didn’t know those products were available,” O’Connor explained. “So, it’s a little bit of a market awareness exercise, and to explain the range of things we can do. It’s a way for brokers who might not know that these covers are available, to help their end clients take advantage of them.”
This, in combination with growth in the large structural indemnity insurance and environmental insurance areas, are what the CEO says will lead to such a significant jump.
“The reason we’re confident about [the growth] is two things,” he explained. “First of all, we’ve got a fantastic client base of brokers, many of whom we’ve been working with for 10 years. But we know from our research that there are also a few brokers, maybe even many brokers out there, who don’t understand what we do and haven’t had exposure to the products that we offer.”
One of the niche products, which O’Connor says also showcases CLS Risk Solution’s innovation, is right to light insurance.
“One theme that runs through CLS quite strongly is it’s been very innovative,” he said. “And you think many MGAs are quite innovative, that’s why they’re able to exist because they keep finding new ways of doing things or new things to do.
“The current rights of light market was essentially developed in its current form by one of our underwriting directors. Because he started writing policies that introduced the concept of agreed conduct, which was a completely new market.”
Right to light insurance is, essentially, about the rights of a current building to natural sunlight - so when a developer decides to build next door, their neighbour isn’t cut off from the sun they have been enjoying.
Vicki Sweeney is lead underwriter for right to light at CLS Risk Solutions, and an expert in everything to do with the niche product that many developers in large cities may need.
“It insures against neighbours around who might come forward and claim,” she explained. “It covers things like planning costs, professional fees - in the first stage if there’s a claim it might be defence of that claim, and it goes right through to live disputes, so if it goes to court it covers injunction risk. There’s quite a lot.”
But as O’Connor points out, it’s not about being on the side of a developer, but instead about the product helping essential buildings go up while occupants of existing buildings are still happy.
“The key thing with all of these, is we’re helping the developer to find a balance between their development need and the neighbour’s interest,” he said. “So, we’re helping to find a way in which the development can take place while protecting the rights of the adjoining properties.”
