European View from the Top: Meeting the challenge

Like many of its peers our business chose independence to preserve its entrepreneurial spirit and work ethic, staying close to our customers with a long-term client service focus and keeping agility in the decision making process.

In the past few years, the insurance market has grown globally to become increasingly complex but remains highly competitive.

It is time to acknowledge the challenges independent brokers face, build on our core strengths, and move forward with a focused strategy to bring high value-added services to clients.

Building relationships
Clients need their brokers to understand their operations. The adoption of a long-term relationship approach has, in my experience, certainly contributed to a deeper understanding of clients' challenges and risk exposures.

The next step is to come up with creative solutions for customers to mitigate, retain and transfer their risks. This is becoming increasingly demanding as the issues that keep risk managers up at night shift from property to liabilities and intangible assets risks.

These ‘emerging risks' of cyber liability, supply chain and reputation create new challenges but offer new opportunities. It is therefore critical for insurance brokers to have extensive industry expertise and a full range of services in-house.

Finding the right talent
Talent management is a key success factor in this endeavour; we need to continually find ways to hire and retain great professionals.

Only by combining expertise and resourcefulness with the flexibility of our organisations can we bring innovative and tailored risk transfer (and alternative risk transfer) solutions to the table.

Another strategic imperative is to have a global footprint. Clients' growth often comes from emerging countries, and an increasing number of multinationals are approaching risk management and insurance placements on a global basis.

Strength in networks
It is the reason why networks of independent brokers have developed so well over the past decade.

Not only is this an efficient way for each member to have the capability to manage multinationals, it is a means to leverage further the risk expertise by sharing knowledge, and providing adequate web platforms to manage clients' global programmes.

Global independent brokers in networks do not necessarily belong to the same brand, but they have specifically chosen to join forces to grow stronger.

Investing in tech
We must also constantly recognise the importance of investing in technology to increase staff productivity and offer leading-edge online services to clients, including web-based and mobile applications.

Technology should certainly be part of the strategic investment portfolio of any modern brokerage company.

The upcoming challenges as independent brokers are many, but all can be overcome.

To succeed we must hire and retain great talent, be part of a strong global network of brokers, invest wisely in technology and remain true to the initial core value.

This will enable our businesses to be more than just insurance brokers; we want to be a partner to those we serve, and this perspective should influence our work every day.

Jose Manuel Dias da Fonseca is chairman of BrokersLink and president of MDS Portugal and Brazil.