The British Insurance Awards 2021: A special year for Aqueous
Responding at a time of crisis and being recognised as a finalist for Broker Partner of the Year at the British Insurance Awards 2021.
The British Insurance Awards, which this year celebrate their 27th year, are undoubtedly the Oscar’s of the UK insurance market. These prestigious awards, judged by a superb panel of independent industry experts and commentators attracts over 1800 of the market’s great and good. This year, that list of attendees not only includes the Aqueous Underwriting team, but we are immensely proud to have been shortlisted for the Broker Partner of the Year award. Needless to say, we are honoured to be shortlisted and can’t wait to don our dinner jackets and catch up with friends and colleagues on the 15th of September.
Whether we win on the night or not, we are proud to have been shortlisted against such strong competition and believe that our entry sums up all that is good about the MGA market , and its ability to respond at a time of crisis.
The Aqueous Broker Partner of the Year award entry
Our entry for the awards was clearly very timely, and centred around our response to brokers’ and policyholders’ challenges, caused by Covid and government restrictions over the last 18 months. In short, SME clients in the food, hospitality, and leisure sectors were stopped in their tracks, overnight, by the imposition of the lockdown way back in March 2020. We responded immediately and signed off on a series of proactive measures, enabling our brokers to help their clients adapt their businesses to the unprecedented market conditions.
These actions included the removal of unoccupied exclusions, free liability insurance add-ons, the introduction of three-month policies and extensions to renewal, quotation, and credit terms. We also analysed our broker partners portfolios to identify which clients were at risk and ensured direct access to our team of empowered underwriters. And looking ahead we have now also designed an automatic Lockdown/Unoccupied extension and incorporated this into our policy wordings as standard for all non-essential retail and hospitality customers. This ensures automatic cover following any future government-driven regional or national lockdown as a result of any existing or future Covid or SARS variant.
“The team at Aqueous have been an invaluable partner for us over the last 12 months. Their ability to provide solutions in challenging areas of risk and flexible, responsive and pragmatic approach to underwriting at a time of unprecedented challenges has been crucial to us being able to deliver the level of service and quality of cover that our clients expect.”
Christopher Mallett, Associate Director, Commercial, Aston Lark
Our swift response to the pandemic helped our brokers navigate their way through the challenges of lockdown and enabled them to fully demonstrate the value they bring to clients. The take up of the initiatives exceeded all our expectations, enabling clients to adapt their businesses with insurance cover in a myriad of ways – including the mothballing of restaurants and diversion to warehouses to focus on takeaways, the setting up of direct and wholesale alcohol/food collect and delivery services, and the embracing of outdoor activities with the erection of marquees, outdoor heating, market stalls and catering vans.
We hope to win the Broker Partner of the Year award on the night. But either way we are delighted that our efforts, all done in partnership with our brokers, have been recognised.
