August 8, 2024

Commercial Combined Update: Interview with Stuart Danskin, Head of Underwriting — UK Regions

Insights UK Regional Division

Risk Appetite

In this latest interview, Mike Bottle, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Distribution, sits down with Stuart Danskin, Director of Underwriting, to discuss Arch’s commercial combined product and how it can help brokers win and retain clients.

Key highlights from their conversation:

Enhanced commercial combined product: Arch has made significant enhancements to its core commercial combined offering based on broker feedback. The product now features broader coverage on an all-risks basis, clear and easy-to-follow policy language, increased limits and new extensions. Risk management support is also included to help clients protect their assets. These improvements make it one of the market-leading commercial combined solutions for UK businesses.
Wide risk appetite: Arch has a strong appetite for commercial combined business across a range of industries and is keen to write UK-based commercial and industrial accounts, predominantly in the manufacturing, services, property owners and selective retail sectors. This allows us to provide solutions for a diverse mix of client types.
Solving complex risks regionally: Arch’s solving complex risk initiative aims to handle complicated, specialty risks through its regional network of branches and underwriters. The goal is to place more of these challenging risks regionally with Arch, rather than having to go to the Lloyd’s market. Brokers can work closely with Arch’s experienced local teams to find tailored solutions for their complex risks.
Easy access to decision makers: Brokers are encouraged to contact their local Arch branch to discuss commercial combined opportunities. Arch’s regional underwriters are empowered to make decisions and provide a high-quality, tailored service. They can quickly respond to broker inquiries and deliver the expertise needed to win and retain commercial combined clients.

For the full interview and further insights, watch our video.

Commercial Combined Update: Interview with Stuart Danskin, Head of Underwriting – UK Regions (Transcript)

Mike Bottle: Hello, and welcome to the latest in a series of updates from Arch UK Regional Division. My name is Mike Bottle, senior vice president responsible for strategy and distribution. I’m delighted to welcome Stuart Danskin, director of underwriting for the regional division. We’re here today to talk about our appetite for commercial combined business and how we can help brokers win and retain clients. Welcome, Stuart.

So, Stuart, can you give us a little bit more about the new commercial combined proposition?

Stuart Danskin: Yes. I can. I’m glad you asked about it. It’s one of our core products, and we’ve really listened to our brokers and our customers. We’ve made it a lot clearer and easier for customers to read. But we’ve also put in some enhanced limits and some new coverages, average free. Brokers often talk to us about the difficulties they have with the recent inflationary measures, but average free really helps. It was something that we kept getting asked about, and we’ve added it in there. But it still comes with our risk management tools, our survey team. We can do pre covers for them, and, of course, access to all of our underwriters, who provide exclusive quotes to the market.

Mike Bottle: Excellent. And can you give us a bit more about appetite? What sort of risks are you seeing at the moment?

Stuart Danskin: A bit of everything really from small start-ups to big businesses. We’ve got a good strong capacity, very much in line with the market. But I always say we write industrial estate business, so anyone that makes things, sells things, distributes things, from paper towels to tinfoil to widgets to car parts and all sorts of weird and wonderful.

Mike Bottle: Excellent. And in terms of sort of niches within that, I hear a lot of talk around solving complex risk initiative. Do you want to just give us a bit of a flavour about what that’s about?

Stuart Danskin: Yeah. I can do. So, one of the things that we really do like is interesting products coverages. So, the sort of things that you have to think about, and our underwriters have to have good discussions about with their brokers, and that’s what we want to encourage really, our brokers to broker to us, to tell us what these risks are so that we can actually go away and underwrite them specifically. The solving complex risks initiative is really our way of trying to get the types of risk that brokers may have to go into specialist Lloyd’s placements, done regionally.

Mike Bottle: Excellent. I mean, it is an exciting initiative. And in terms of brokers, if they want to get in touch to talk about solving complex risks, how do they get hold of us?

Stuart Danskin: Just talk to your local branch. Hopefully, all of our brokers know our underwriters. Pick up the phone. Go and visit them. They’re all empowered. They all have direct access, and a lot of them their own autonomy to actually write this business locally.

Mike Bottle: Fantastic. Thanks, Stuart.

Stuart Danskin: Thank you.