Has your brokerage embraced the property engineering advantage?

Commercial property insurance clients want their brokers to help them navigate risk exposure and ensure resiliency in today’s challenging insurance market – what else could you do to help them?

The spectre of underinsurance looms large for property owners and insurance brokers alike. One recent survey of 503 executives found that as many as 43% of commercial properties could be underinsured. Meanwhile, 63% of respondents said they hadn’t reviewed their commercial property insurance in at least a year, meaning they could find themselves out of pocket in the event of a claim.

Faced with a changing risk environment, many insurers are resorting to charging higher premiums or writing just a fraction of the total risk that makes up a property insurance policy.

FM Affiliated is unique. Our loss prevention philosophy and engineering-led approach reduces uncertainty around property valuations and on-site risks. This allows us to partner with you, make your clients more resilient, and offer them stronger terms and conditions.  

We do this with an approach based on three foundational pillars: 1) engineering-led risk assessment and non-actuarial, location-based underwriting, 2) research-based risk mitigation, and 3) impactful broker enablement programs.

Maximising resilience with engineer-led assessments

Every piece of business we write with you will have a dedicated Account Engineer and Field Engineering resource. These experts help clients understand and mitigate property risks. The Field Engineer’s first job is to visit the client’s most complex and valuable locations to get an accurate view of risk before we provide a quote.

This process allows us to provide better coverage, 100% capacity, and stable, competitive premiums through a detailed analysis of a property’s construction, occupancy type, existing protection measures, and on-site exposures.

Our sole focus is commercial property insurance. By partnering with FM Affiliated, your clients will have access to 180 years of research and engineering expertise. Our customised approach allows us to offer tailored solutions to improve the resilience of your clients with minimal disruption.

We have around 3,000 Field Engineers on the ground to liaise with client site contacts and communicate information back to the FM Affiliated Account Team. The Account Engineer will then work with you and the insured to help them understand their portfolio risk and how to prioritise cost-effective risk improvement solutions.

Having a partner like FM Affiliated means your clients can regularly draw on our insights to maximise resilience and preserve coverage levels as their businesses change and grow. Whenever an issue is identified, we'll help engineer an optimal solution. This enables us to improve your clients' risk exposures and nurture stable, long-term relationships that benefit all parties involved.

Keeping clients at the cutting edge of risk prevention

The insights and recommendations our engineers make are informed by the pioneering work that takes place at the FM Research Campus. This unique, 1,600-acre facility hosts four state-of-the-art laboratories, where we study all types of hazards to which your clients might be susceptible:

• Our Fire Technology Lab is the largest of its kind, simulating hundreds of full-scale fire tests
• In the Natural Hazards Lab, we simulate the effects of high winds, floods, earthquakes, and even UV radiation on different building materials
• Researchers in our Electrical Hazards Lab test equipment to ensure it won’t ignite dust or gases that may be present on clients’ properties during normal operation or fault conditions
• Our Hydraulics Lab replicates fire protection systems and conducts tests so you can be sure clients’ suppression systems will function as intended when properly installed and maintained

All this adds up to unrivalled expertise that's proven to save clients money. For example, those who followed our loss prevention advice ahead of Hurricane Harvey experienced 80% lower flood losses than those who didn't. Those who did the same ahead of Hurricane Maria experienced 75% lower wind-related losses than those who didn't in the affected area.

Enabling brokers to serve clients' risk prevention needs

Helping clients to adopt a loss prevention and engineering-led approach can be a catalyst for your success. Adopting a proactive approach to risk mitigation means stable capacity, competitive premiums, and better coverage for clients, as well as reduced policy admin and lasting client relationships for you.

To enable these mutually beneficial partnerships, we provide a broad range of materials and educational opportunities to upskill your teams and help you meet client needs in the most effective way.

These range from articles (like this one) to face-to-face meetings, bespoke workshops, and even touring roadshows and events. For example, our Broker Engineering Forum lets brokers experience the science and research behind FM Affiliated Risk Report recommendations and includes a tour of our research campus.

We also provide resources to help your clients future-proof their operational resilience, providing opportunities to deepen your relationships with key clients and upsell value-adding services, such as our Plan Review service.

If you have a mid-market commercial property insurance client that is open to introducing a strategic approach to risk management and reduction, we’d love to speak more about how we can help.

Click here to submit a new business enquiry or email FM Affiliated Marketing to contact a member of our team.

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This is the third in a series of articles FM Affiliated is producing to help insurance brokers understand the value we can provide to their commercial property insurance clients. Look out for the next post in this collection, which will explore how our 100% capacity solutions save you hassle and enhance client experiences.