Case Study - Insurance Restructure

Assisting a company for whom Commercial Insurances were causing an urgent problem...

I received a panicked phone call last week from a longstanding client. Their commercial insurance broker had advised them that their insurer had pulled out of the fleet policy market and would no longer cover their portfolio of vehicles, which had a combined value of over £200,000. They had been given three days notice, were out on site on the other side of the country (in said vehicles), and were not due to finish their current job for at least another week.

Fleet policies are a tricky area - too much admin (drivers on, drivers off, bumps, scrapes, accidents…) and as a broker friend explained to me, “they’re a bit like the salad in a chicken sandwich, it’s there but it doesn’t add much to the actual meal”. They are wholly necessary but wholly unpopular to administer.

However, like so much in life a lot of this comes down to who you know. I made a quick phone call to my associates at Towergate, and it turned out that the insurer wasn’t pulling out of fleet after all, only pulling out of fleet policies presented by smaller brokerages. They sorted out a quick Letter of Authority and from there Towergate were able to shift the fleet policy in its entirety to under their care, and subsequently even find a more company-appropriate policy alternative with Allianz.

Not only that, but they then took a look at the company’s other commercial cover. The “chicken” in the sandwich, to stretch the metaphor a bit further. The company in question had enjoyed massive growth over the last couple of years, and what started as a one man band now has multiple employees, national contracts and a turnover well in excess of a million pounds. However they had not been advised or assisted in upscaling their commercial insurance requirements accordingly and were running on the back of a completely inappropriate policy, leaving them extremely vulnerable. Towergate advised a complete overhaul, and in the space of forty eight hours the company had a complete, comprehensive and bespoke package of commercial insurances enabling it to operate truly safely for the first time in years.

We all know it is important to review and update our commercial insurances on a regular basis, but how many of us actually do so? Or rather, how many of your clients actually do so? Separately but by extension we are currently assisting a company that had inadequate insurance cover in place, suffered a significant loss that they incorrectly assumed was covered, and are now in the early stages of putting together a CVL as a result. A worst case scenario for sure, but not an impossibility.

As an agent for Towergate we are well placed to facilitate implementing new or revised commercial insurances as part of our mandate to assist restructures and reorganisations to avoid insolvency procedures, and furthermore, we can pay introducer fees on any policies successfully placed. Please keep us in mind.