The soft market is changing broker behaviour in predictable ways. Brokers are shopping risks more aggressively, moving faster and, in some cases, favouring short-term ease over longer-term placement discipline.
That shift reflects a more competitive market. Pricing has eased, capacity is broader and insurers are working harder to win business than they were a year or two ago. Paul O’Leary (pictured), chief underwriting officer and director at Epsilon Underwriting Agencies, said two trends in broker behaviour currently stand out. The first is more remarketing and greater pressure for speed. The second is a growing struggle among some brokers to provide the underwriting detail needed when business moves beyond quote-and-bind into more technical placement.
“Certainly, we are seeing more remarketing of accounts and greater demand for faster turnaround,” said O’Leary.
Remarketing is hardly surprising in softer conditions. Brokers are under pressure to test pricing, seek broader terms and show clients they are leaving nothing on the table. Stronger insurer competition, especially for better-performing risks, has made it easier to move accounts and reopen existing placements.
But underwriters say a big concern is what gets lost when the market becomes too focused on speed.
O’Leary pointed to a growing tendency for brokers to move away from subscription placement because it can seem simpler in the short term. Yet the longer-term value of subscription business should not be underestimated. It creates underwriting discipline, gives brokers fallback options if appetite shifts and reduces the risk of being caught out by sharply different terms and conditions later on. It can also help on claims, where broader scrutiny from underwriting peers may support better outcomes.
That may not be the fashionable argument in a market geared towards speed, but it remains an important one. Competitive conditions may reward fast movement today, but brokers still need to think about how resilient a placement will be when pricing hardens again.
The pressure on underwriters to move quickly is real as well. According to some industry sources, same-day turnaround is increasingly treated as the benchmark rather than the exception. That is pushing underwriting agencies to invest even more in technology and workflow efficiency, not just to respond faster, but to spend less time gathering routine data and more time applying underwriting judgement.
“The need to respond to brokers more quickly is pushing MGAs to develop technology that helps them find efficiencies in the underwriting process,” said O’Leary.
For specialist underwriters, that should be a good thing. Better systems ought to free up more time for negotiation, coverage discussions and technical analysis. But that only works if the submission arriving on the underwriter’s desk is strong enough to begin with.
This brings O’Leary’s second point into sharper focus. One of the clearest capability gaps can appear when some brokers are handling risks that no longer fit neatly into a quote-and-bind environment.
Quote-and-bind works well for straightforward business, but it does not remove the need for brokers to understand how to present a technical risk when automation stops. That is where some underwriters are seeing strain.
“We are increasingly seeing brokers move business out of quote-and-bind platforms without the skills needed to provide the underwriting information a more technical risk requires for review,” said O’Leary. A blunt but timely assessment.
In a soft market, brokers can sometimes get away with thinner submissions because competition creates more willingness to engage. But that does not mean underwriters can make sound decisions without the right detail. If anything, the risk story and claims context matter more when turnaround expectations are high, because underwriters have less time for chasing missing information across multiple emails and calls.
The cost of weak broker submissions is likely being felt across the market. Underwriters are spending too much time reviewing risks that may never bind, fall outside appetite or arrive without the detail needed to support a proper assessment. That creates a drag on the whole industry.
For brokers, a softer market may reward speed and encourage more remarketing, but neither is a substitute for technical broking. Once a risk moves beyond the ease of quote-and-bind, the brokers who stand out are the ones who can present it properly, supply the right detail and explain the risk with confidence.
