As Insurance Brokers, we are traditionally involved in providing advice to our clients on a wide range of insurance-related matters, and we also assist with claims settlement and play a key role in providing underwriting information to insurers.

We play a matchmaking role of matching our clients with Insurers in a complex, multi-dimensional process. In your case, our role is to scan the market, match your company with insurers who have the skill, capacity, risk appetite, and financial strength to underwrite your risk, and then help you to select from competing offers. Price is important, but is only one of several criteria that clients consider in deciding upon the Insurer or Insurers that provide their coverage. Also important are the scope of coverage offered by competing insurers, the risk management services provided, the insurer’s reputation for claims settlement and other factors. It is common for the coverage not to be placed with the lowest bidder. In the case of very large risks, such as yours, coverage is likely to be spread over many insurers, requiring considerable skill on our part as the Insurance Broker.

For their part, Insurers are invited to provide quotations on complex risks. Given the variation among insurers and their available capacity, their market niches, the distribution of risk in their portfolios, the information they have about the risk, and their relationship with us, quotations will vary with some insurers possibly declining to quote. This natural variation will include quotations with varying degrees of competitiveness from which we will assist you to complete the selection process. This variation is a natural consequence of a competitive market in which we seek to engage, in search of the best placements for your company.

In addition to placement of insurance, we will also help you understand and measure your risk, advise you on how insurance can alleviate the costs of risk, help design insurance coverage programs, and assist you with claims settlement. We often provide other functions such as designing of your insurance portfolio, risk management consulting, management of captive insurance companies, alternative risk financing, etc.

Insurers depend on us providing accurate information so that they can underwrite and price policies. However, the underwriting information available to insurers is inevitably somewhat incomplete and imprecise. Such informational imperfections lead to a serious problem in insurance markets, and these occur when we are dealing with clients that have more information about their risk characteristics than insurers. Because insurers are not fully informed about individual risk characteristics, some clients are charged prices that are too low relative to their risk characteristics, while other clients are charged prices that are too high. The costs of variations are borne by individuals and firms/companies who either end up paying premiums that are too high given their risk or being squeezed out of the insurance market altogether.

We help alleviate these problems, and are usually better informed about your risks than Insurers, and they can use this information if a relationship of trust exists between us and them. With the information transmitted by us, Insurers can compete more vigorously for business and can price more competitively and fairly. In this way, we assist the flow of information in the insurance market and enhance the efficiency of the market to the benefit of all players.

Finally, let’s look at our role in the placement of policies with insurers. For their part, Insurers often quote prices on the basis of information from their own risk analysis or provided by us. These quotations are often competitive if the insurer believes it has good information about the level of risk. However, insurers will often offer non-competitive quotes, submit incomplete/non-committal quotes, or decline to quote, if information is incomplete or if they believe that they will not get the business. This means that price quotations may vary considerably in their competitiveness.

Our role as your Insurance Broker is to increase price and quality competitiveness, by providing you access to a wider range of possible insurers. By aligning its interest with ours, the Insurer will have more confidence in the selection of risks and in the information provided by us. This will help reduce the number of non-competitive or non-committal quotes submitted and encourage insurers to quote more aggressively.

Our typical work activities depend largely on the size and nature of the client we are serving and the scale of their business. We, at Hunt Adams, are prepared to carry out the following tasks for you:

• gathering information from you, assessing your insurance needs and profiling the risk for you;
• building and maintaining ongoing relationships with you at various levels, including scheduling and attending meetings and spending time understanding the nature of your businesses or lives;
• foreseeing your' insurance needs, such as policy renewals;
• researching insurance companies and their various policies to find the most suitable insurance for your businesses at the best price;
• arranging specialised types of insurance cover in complex cases; this may involve preparing reports for insurance underwriters and surveyors and negotiating with insurers;
• advising you on risk management, and helping you to devise new ways to mitigate risks, for example, by adding security measures such as fencing, surveillance cameras or lighting to commercial properties to reduce the likelihood of break-ins;
• renewing or amending existing policies;
• advising you on whether and when you need to make a claim on your policies;
• developing relationships with underwriters, surveyors, photographers, structural engineers and other professionals for your benefit.