By: Christy Stevenson, State Director-Georgia
The stubborn hard market affecting our industry has been particularly challenging in states like Georgia, where the confluence of increased costs of repairs, severe weather, frivolous litigation, and a difficult regulatory environment has wreaked havoc with Personal Lines and is now knocking at the door of the previously resilient Commercial marketplace.
As we continue to navigate the hard market headwinds, we’re seeing an increase of previously standard Commercial business leaking out to E&S, especially in certain verticals like Habitational and Convenience Stores. Many of our agent members are not fluent in E&S and need help in remarketing this business in an unfamiliar marketplace.
Smart Choice offers a robust portfolio of E&S partners in our Express Markets vertical who can assist with the placement of this business and enable our agents to retain it in their agency. The challenge our agents face is establishing a rapport with E&S partners to get their submissions reviewed and quotes issued promptly.
As you can imagine, E&S Underwriters are extremely busy these days, and they will prioritize their inbox based on the completeness of submissions, but also by the strength of their relationship with the agent (and the agent’s network!). Recently, we hosted a webinar for Georgia agents with our RPS Underwriter, Kaitlin MacGillivray, who covered what Underwriters are looking for to prioritize a submission.
We recorded the webinar, and you can click here to view it! This presentation was well-received by our Georgia agents who may have been hesitant to dive into E&S. As you watch the webinar, you’ll hear Kaitlin advise our agents on best practices for submissions, but also to put “SMART CHOICE” in the subject line, which will indicate this is a priority submission for them. The relationship RPS and our other Express Markets partners have with Smart Choice does matter!
Enjoy the webinar, and the next time you get a declination from our standard lines carriers, you can leverage your knowledge (as well as your network affiliation!) to place the business with a Smart Choice E&S partner through Express Markets, where you will receive 100% of the commission.