Gloria Brosius — Pinnacle Agriculture
Wish No. 1: Offer me deductible options that make sense.
I frequently get low deductible options, which may sound appealing until you look at the high premium. When I ask for higher deductibles (and presumably, lower premiums), it doesn't make financial sense to move to that higher deductible.
With Pinnacle, in particular, we're a fairly new company. We started business in 2012. Initially we took low deductibles because we weren't sure what our risk appetite was at that point. As we have become a more mature company, we know we can take higher deductibles. But oftentimes when we ask for the higher deductibles, the correlating premium relief isn't there. So it doesn't make sense for us to take the higher deductible, even though we want to. The premium needs to correlate better to the higher deductible.
I think insurance companies want to be taken out of the working layer of the claims. If Pinnacle, or any company, is willing to take on a higher deductible and keep that insurance company out of the working layer of those claims, the premium relief has to be there so that it makes sense for us financially to do so. But the premium relief has to be there.
Insurance companies need to do a better job of re-looking at that premium when a company is willing to take the higher deductible.
Wish No. 2: Know my company and why my risk is (or isn't) different than everyone else's.
I make every effort to distinguish my company from all the other insureds that my underwriters may come across, and my wish is that they have a true understanding of my business. Read the materials I give you during our meetings, and ask me questions.
For the most part, my partners in the industry understand the differences between my company and others. My wish is for that understanding to continue.
I work very, very hard to make sure they understand my business and why I'm different from other agriculture companies. When I meet with a new potential partner, a new insurance company that's not on my coverage, I go into deep explanations and I really want them to understand.
We work with a lot of chemicals, but we don't manufacture. A lot of times an insurance company will hear the word chemical, and they start backing off right away because they don't want to deal with that. But we are different in that we don't manufacture the chemicals. We apply them.
That often is a very deep explanation that I have to go into with the insurance companies, to make sure they understand our risk is lower than someone who actually does the manufacturing of the chemicals.
I like to have face-to-face meetings with underwriters and insurance companies because that's one way to remember me, and to remember Pinnacle Agriculture as being a little bit different from what they might have lumped me in as. So I think that face-to-face interaction is important.
And giving them documentation that they can take back to their office and remember you more clearly when they're doing the actual underwriting is important.