Does your insurance broker have an in-house claims team?

When getting insurance for the first time, businesses tend to weigh up a number of factors – including price, breadth of coverage, customer reviews, the broker’s specialisms and reputation, and whether they’re licenced by bodies like Lloyds.

But something that first-time buyers often overlook is whether a broker outsources their claims or has a dedicated team in-house.

Here, I look at some of the benefits of choosing an insurance broker with an in-house claims team – and how Superscript’s expert team supports our clients.

Advantages of an in-house claims team

For an insurance broker, a claims team plays just as vital a role as the brokers themselves. They improve the broker’s ability to respond to claims and negotiate coverage with insurers – and provide a much better, more transparent service for their clients at a time when they need it most.

Extensive knowledge

An in-house claims team often has to deal with claims across different policies and locations, with multiple insurers. In one day, they may work with clients in the UK, Europe and North America, and could be looking at a whole range of covers, such as cyber, professional indemnity, and directors’ and officers’ liability.

This range of knowledge and experience means that an in-house claims team is equipped to provide the same level of care, attention and technical insight to every client – whether you’re a pre-regulated startup claiming for an alleged breach of contract or a publicly owned technology multinational dealing with a ransomware attack on your systems.

Time to offer support

Unless you know a claims management company well, you’re unlikely to receive support from them or the insurer.

On the other hand, an in-house claims team is more likely to have the time and capacity to chat about claims strategy and options. And if you have an issue where coverage is silent or ambiguous, they can spend time helping you find potential solutions to the problem.

At Superscript, we’re happy to chat whichever way works best for you – face to face, on a call or over email.

An advocate in your corner

Policy wordings can be complicated, and – like many other contracts – insurance policies can be open to interpretation. It’s therefore vital that you choose a broker that can not only provide great insight and advice, based on vast amounts of experience, but will also advocate for you if you ever need to make a claim.

Superscript’s in-house claims team is there to help you. It’s in our interest to support our clients. And if we don’t agree with a claims assessment from an insurer, we’ll fight your corner.

Speed and responsiveness

From our experience, many insurers acknowledge a claim or issue quickly, but they often take five working days or longer to respond to your first notification of a claim.

By comparison, an in-house claims team takes much less time to respond when you need help or assistance.

At Superscript, 100% of claims are acknowledged in less than 24 hours, while 79% of claims receive a physical response in less than eight hours – which means someone has reviewed the claim and determined what further detail we need.

And because we work alongside our underwriters and brokers, we don’t need to wait too long to get a full picture of the situation and begin drafting a claims strategy.

Support with renewals

Smaller brokers sometimes outsource their claims management, either to a claims management company or to their principal (if they're not directly regulated) which can present problems with speed, accuracy, advocacy and transparency. These companies and principals often have zero experience working with technology businesses or the policies they buy.

These issues can often be avoided by using an insurance broker with an in-house team. Renewals can be processed quicker as we have all the information we need right in front of us: the date of any claims, the alleged circumstances and, fundamentally, what’s been paid.

Superscript’s in-house claims team

SuperscriptQ works with dynamic start-ups, scale-ups and household names in the technology ecosystem – all with unique risk exposures. We’re highly experienced in providing advice and helping each and every client navigate their distinctive risk exposure, in line with their risk appetite.

And our experienced in-house claims team plays a key role in SuperscriptQ’s success. Made up of industry experts, lawyers and wording specialists, the team is committed to providing support and guidance to our clients to ensure every claims experience is a positive one.

Interested in speaking to our specialist advisory team or learning more about our claims process? See how to get in touch with SuperscriptQ.