An introduction to FM Affiliated’s science-based approach to commercial property insurance

Securing the best coverage for clients is an ongoing challenge for commercial property insurance brokers. In today's insurance market, the ever-changing risk environment has created a cycle of rising premiums and tightening capacity.

At FM Affiliated, we believe an engineering-led, science-based approach can be the solution to this problem – helping you to enhance client experiences, deliver the best coverage for the lowest premiums possible and nurture stable, long-term relationships with your accounts.

This article outlines the benefits our unique approach to risk mitigation delivers for insurance brokers and how you can unlock these for you and your clients.

How brokers benefit fromFM Affiliated's approach

FM Affiliated has been providing best-in-class commercial property insurance for the middle market and industry verticals (including apartments, condominiums, hotels, senior living, office buildings, retail, and healthcare, light manufacturing and warehousing) throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia for more than 70 years. Our entire capital base is dedicated to this line of business – allowing us to offer hassle-free coverage and simplifying the programs you deliver to clients.

We are a science- and research-based, loss prevention-driven insurer. Every piece of business we write with you will have an Account Engineer assigned to it. They will take the time to understand each location we insure and advise on how best to manage and mitigate risks. This allows us to deliver a range of innovations that empower you to serve your clients' needs more effectively:

1. Competitive premiums and better coverage. We help you and your clients understand their exposures and avoid or limit their losses. This unlocks large limits and helps us offer the better terms and conditions to clients interested in maintaining or improving the risk profile of their assets. As a mutual, we are client-owned, and our underwriters and loss adjusters strive to provide unbeatable coverage via broad policy wordings.
   
   
2. Streamlined capacity sourcing. As part of FM Group, we are backed by $20 billion in capital. So, when we believe in a risk, we'll write it 100%. This eliminates the need for you to source multiple providers or haggle over policy wordings. It also minimises the administration required to maintain your clients' coverage over time.
   
   
3. Better claims management experiences. Our in-house claims management team provides an exceptional customer experience and is empowered to process claims efficiently. This helps you to optimise client experiences and support client cashflow and resilience in the event of a loss.
   
   
4. Longer-term relationships. Our ongoing risk monitoring and prevention services help policyholders to preserve coverage and lower premiums, and secure favourable policy terms and conditions, as they proactively manage change. We help them to drive ongoing business resilience, resulting in lasting relationships and keeping accounts in your stable.

The reason we can offer these benefits to you and your clients is because our approach delivers results. Our policyholders effectively mitigate risks and typically experience fewer losses the longer they stay with us.

What our approach means for insurance brokers

While our approach to commercial buildings insurance lets us offer unique benefits, it also means we operate differently from other insurance providers. Our focus is on helping you understand the clients in your portfolio and helping them remain resilient. To do this, we may send an engineer to inspect a site before providing a quote. Ongoing risk prevention has always been a foundational part of our approach, helping our policyholders manage change as their business evolves and grows over time.

The expertise we provide forms the basis of the long-term relationships that keep accounts in your portfolio and create opportunities for you to promote value-added services, such as our Plan Review services. The Plan Review service helps clients secure the best terms and conditions for a well-managed risk as they develop and enhance their facilities.

We also arm brokers proactively with the insights and knowledge they need to communicate with clients authoritatively. This will help brokers ensure clients become confident in the broker's ability to get them the best deal possible – through tools, events, workshops, and articles like this one. You can find more information on our online training hub. We recommend our Property Insurance Essentials training for new brokers or the Broker Engineering Forum for more experienced professionals.

"We are committed to educating our partners, whether they are new to property insurance or experienced brokers,” notes Lacinda Elliott, AVP, Senior Production Underwriter at FM Affiliated. "Continued training improves our broker teams' skills and effectiveness, enabling them to win more business.”

The world of commercial property insurance is complex.FM Affiliated can help brokers like you deliver innovative, research- and engineering-based risk management solutions, customised to your clients' needs. In the process, we'll position you as a trusted advisor, helping you nurture lasting client relationships.

If you have a client that would be a good fit for us and want to know more, we'd love to hear from you. Click here to submit a new business inquiry or email FM Affiliated Marketing to contact a member of our team.

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This is the first 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 cover how brokerages can align their operations with our risk appetite.