Placing Commercial Insurance outside the U.K

The world is becoming a smaller place and we can fly from one end to the other in around 24 hours and what with the internet we can visually see and talk to each other anywhere in the world within seconds, so what makes insuring a risk in the U.K via a broker or insurer in another country so difficult, apart from the normal regulations in each of those countries. Would it be possible to have a system in place that could offer terms worldwide on S.M.E business, corporate or even domestic classes?

The big block is protection!

The technology and information is there in the main to be able to underwrite anywhere in the world and to price a risk, however normal insurance companies do not yet have that vision to automate a risk such as liabilities, commercial combined and professional indemnity insurance.

The formula to be able to give a broker and an insurer business from around the world is there, yes there are time differences and yes there are areas in the world a underwriter may not be comfortable with, but for as many that an insurer or underwriter may not want to write there will be just as many that they could and would be happy with.

Internet and automation of products based on local knowledge can be factorial into any quote engine and indeed with intelligent underwriting the world is your oyster.

Commercial Lines Insurance

With recent pressure on the domestic general insurance market it is no secret that many brokers are now looking to enhance their income by attacking the commercial insurance market, both at corporate & SME levels.  You may well argue that this has always been the case however, big players in the domestic car insurance and home insurance areas such as aggregators, direct writers are now paying attention to the commercial insurance market, an example of this is the Towergate deal with Confused.com.  Other online traders are signing up to offer commercial insurances ranging from Professional Indemnity Insurance to Public and Employers Liability for tradesmen and woman.  Where does it all end up, well probably in two camps the have’s and have’ not’s, by that we mean those brokers who readily accept the challenge of the direct writer & aggregator sites by having their own online Quote and Buy Systems which they can choose their own suppliers for, or get a bolt on ready made list of insurers to choose from.
Unfortunately insurers are still very slow to believe in this type of technology and have pretty closed ears to any new players or ideas and there are a lot of people shouting about how good and much they know about internet and mobile trading, but in reality there’s only 4 or 5 real players in the commercial SME and Corporate markets that have got it right.