Insurance Renewal Season: 8 Tips for Success

Renewing an insurance policy can be a daunting task for even the most experienced risk manager. Without adequate preparation, buyers often find themselves confronted with higher premiums and fewer coverage options.

Global commercial insurance pricing rose 3% in the third quarter of 2023, according to the Marsh Global Insurance Market Index.

The concerns and needs of each organisation can be dramatically different. Work with your broker to create a plan based on your specific risk appetite, culture, and budgetary considerations. The main topics you should discuss are:

• Primary objective. Some organisations may wish to reduce premium expenses even if it means retaining more risk. Others may want to secure a robust coverage even if it requires additional cost. And some may have specific and varying objectives by coverage type and/or asset.

• Where specific priorities rank. In other words, what you must achieve versus what you would like to accomplish and where you can be flexible. 

Unfortunately, many buyers don’t research what their policy covers before renewal – only to discover that they are underinsured or have overlapping coverages.

Here’s how you can avoid this, according to Tom Williams, Senior Client Success Manager at Insurwave: “Think about what sources you need to get data from to provide to the broker. Do you know which systems need to collect which data and who’s going to do it? It takes effort to collect data from multiple people and different systems.”

"Once you are done" Tom continues, "think about how you can make this process more repeatable or maintainable. Pulling data from different systems can be too time and effort consuming, so it makes sense to have a plan for how you can make this more repeatable, including processes and technology."

The negotiations involving renewals can be lengthy and more challenging for those directly involved in the insurance buying process. Despite some buyers’ perception that this flow is egregious, insurers tend to take this as an inherent part of the underwriting process.

In order to keep stakeholders informed of the status of their submissions and any concerns raised by insurers, such as price, buyers should stay in regular contact with their brokers throughout the process. Having a single source of data is critically important, as this helps all parties stay on the same page and have transparent asset, risk exposure, and premiums.

The insurance renewal process requires clear, transparent and constant directives at every stage. Especially at the questionnaire stage, where a significant amount of information is collected.

When gathering the disparate amount of data needed to go through this process, it is vital that you communicate what your goals are and what you need from the departments involved. In order to determine whether your communication is effective, you should ask yourself:

• Do all departments understand what is needed from them and when?
• Which departments will be affected if the renewal questionnaire is not completed on time, or correctly? Are they informed of these consequences?
• Are there any incentives for the departments with the bigger premiums? If not, would that help?

The clearer and more transparent your communications are, the easier the process will be for your colleagues and, therefore, the richer the collected data. Great data is the difference between a poor snapshot and a high-definition video.

This allows the broker to be better informed and use this knowledge to create or obtain the policies you need from insurance companies. Deep understanding of your business will empower your broker to better represent you in insurance markets. Here’s why.

“Make sure you work with your broker so that they have a really good deep understanding of what your business does. Once the brokers collect the right information, they’re going to present coverages and products that are really well aligned to your business,” says David Power.

“Work with your broker and insurer to examine what the insurers are presenting to you in terms of price coverage and deductible excesses. What will often happen, you might have a new entrant or new insurer coming in with a really competitive price. But when you look at what they’re actually providing cover for, it’s not actually that well aligned to what you need, or the excesses might be really inappropriate.”

The top tip is to really work with your broker to understand what products and coverage you’re being offered.

Insurance companies are constantly coming up with new pricing models to increase profitability, so any previous assumptions about premium costs can no longer be relied upon during renewal.

“Work with your broker to make sure that the data that you’re providing is up to date, and accurate, because that data is going to be used as the basis for your insurance coverage, and you want it to be based on good accurate data, which needs to be complete and up to date” Tom recommends.

When it comes to our personal lives, to make sure we are getting the best price on our car insurance, it usually pays to shop around. Despite this common knowledge, many businesses simply renew their existing policies each year without taking the time to compare their coverage and premiums with other companies.

In short, when your renewal approaches, it is important to shop around in order to ensure you are paying fair prices for your coverage. Doing so could save you quite a lot of money.

In the past, a lot of manual processes were involved to review policies and renew coverages. But technology has revolutionised insurance renewals, making them easier and more efficient than ever.

Most of the renewal process can be automated with help from artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies. There are tools able to analyse all policy and asset data and check for any changes in real-time, for example.

By leveraging such technology, companies can save time and money when navigating the hassle of the renewal season. Of course, in combination with sturdy security protocols these technological advances can ensure that customers’ data remains safe while having an easy time keeping up with their policy renewals.