Soft conditions remain entrenched across much of the market and the focus for many brokers could be shifting from pricing relief to placement opportunity. Some industry reports show that many of the strongest opportunities are now in segments where underwriting agencies can combine specialist access, broader product offerings and meaningful capacity to help brokers secure and grow business. That can be particularly relevant where broker value often rests on finding the right home for risks, rather than simply delivering a lower premium.
Steadfast Group’s underwriting leadership is suggesting that the next phase of their agency growth will come less from broad market momentum than from targeted execution in areas where product fit, broker usability and line size still matter.
Mark Senkevics (pictured), CEO - Underwriting Agencies for Steadfast, acknowledged that some specialist classes, notably cyber and professional lines, have come under pressure. But he also pointed to more promising openings in domestic insurance, business package, construction and strata, where broker demand is more closely tied to access, coverage fit and available line size than to a simple race on price.
“Castle has provided a great opportunity for us,” he said.
That could say a lot about where the market is moving. For brokers, the significance is that growth is not confined to the traditional specialty hot spots. It is also emerging in propositions that are scalable, easy to place and less exposed to the sharper swings of parts of the commercial cycle. Senkevics said Castle, Steadfast’s Australia-wide homeowners' proposition, has grown strongly, while its business package is also providing uplift for commercial agencies and helping to offset weakness in larger commercial business.
The other side of the agency story for Steadfast is consolidation. Miramar Group, which recently consolidated and now brings together eight commercial agencies, and Prevail, which combined three high-net-worth consumer agencies, could be examples of how agencies are combining to try and make themselves more useful to brokers. The logic is straightforward: a one-stop proposition can be more valuable in a competitive market because it reduces friction, widens cross-sell opportunities and gives brokers faster access to specialist solutions across adjacent classes.
Another Steadfast owned business, MECON, the specialist construction-focused underwriting agency recently increased construction-risk capacity to $125 million from $50 million.
“That gives them an enormous opportunity to get into that middle-market space,” said Senkevics.
For brokers, the middle-market construction business can be precisely the sort of segment where meaningful additional capacity can change placement options, open new conversations with clients and make specialist agencies more central to the transaction.
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The same theme runs through CHU, another Steadfast agency and one the biggest players in the strata sector.
Senkevics said the agency’s earlier portfolio remediation has left it in a position where market pricing has now caught up and moved beyond it, creating more room to be selective on pricing, retain business and pursue new opportunities.
The broader lesson could be that softer market conditions have made agency growth more selective, not less possible. Agencies that want to grow need discipline, diversification and strong customer service.
That means the most compelling opportunities are now likely to be found not in chasing the cheapest capacity, but in backing agencies that can offer a broader proposition, larger lines and sharper specialist execution in the classes where clients still need solutions.
