NAPSLO Offers Info Highlighting Wholesale Brokers

The National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices Ltd. (www.napslo.org) has launched an education and awareness campaign to build awareness of the value that wholesale brokers bring to retail brokers and corporate risk managers when placing specialty insurance coverage.

The education and awareness campaign will be announced at the NAPSLO 2008 Annual Convention in San Diego, Sept. 10-13.

"We want to demonstrate how wholesale brokers play a key role in the insurance value chain," said NAPSLO Communications and Technology Committee Co-Chair Letha Heaton. "Wholesalers meet a specific need in the marketplace by finding the best specialty lines coverage and often innovative solutions for those risks that would otherwise not be protected."

The campaign follows a NAPSLO January 2008 survey of retail agents and brokers that showed an overall positive attitude toward working with wholesale brokers. In addition to access they provide to markets, wholesale brokers were most valued for their experience, expertise and knowledge.

The outreach effort will illustrate the ways in which wholesale brokers bring value to retail insurance agents and corporate risk managers by providing both the expertise and markets needed to place specialty risks.

"Wholesalers use the very qualities identified by agents and brokers in our earlier survey – experience, expertise and knowledge – to find the right market and innovative solutions so companies in any industry can find the coverage they need," said Robert Sargent, NAPSLO Communications and Technology Committee co-chair. "Our campaign is designed to build awareness of this value and assist our members in the increasingly competitive market we all face."

Surplus lines companies are able to offer specialty insurance in large part because they are free of rate and form restrictions imposed on other insurance carriers. In this way, companies are able to react to changes in the market and design a policy that meets the needs of the insurer and the insured.

Since 1994 the A.M Best Company has performed an annual survey of the excess and surplus lines market and has found that its solvency record is as good, if not better, than the overall industry.