What insurance products sell the best? What our broker survey discovered….

Half of the premium volume generated by Canadian brokers comes from commercial policies on average, say respondents to Canadian Underwriter’s 2024 National Broker Survey.

As for brokerage size, firms with 20 or fewer employees say 33% of their total premium volume comes from commercial business, compared with 58% at brokerages with 20-to-99 employees and 61% at firms with more than 100 employees.

Men responding to the survey report an average 57% of premium volume from commercial policies, against 41% for women respondents. And brokers with 30 or more years in the business have the highest rate of commercial policy premium volume at 59%.

In this year’s survey, fielded in January and February 2024, more than 200 brokers nationwide shared views about challenges and opportunities for the broker distribution channel. The CU survey is sponsored by Sovereign Insurance.

Package deals

As for how to build coverage, 69% of 2024’s survey respondents either agree or strongly agree with the statement: ‘Packaged insurance products offer more benefits to your clients than standalone coverages.’

The statement included qualifiers emphasizing these products package many base coverages together and can offer greater breadth of coverage and customization, and limit potential coverage gaps.

Only 9% of respondents either disagree or strongly disagree with the statement. The remaining 21% are neutral. The question is new in 2024’s survey so there are no prior-year comparisons.

Fully 85% of women respondents agree that package deals offer more benefits than standalone coverage, compared with 60% of men. And newer brokers (77%) and those at smaller firms (79%) indicate they’re most receptive to packaged coverage.

Closing the deal

As far as completing transactions goes, 38% of brokerages responding to the survey say they offer after-hours customer service. That’s comparable to the 39% to 40% levels seen in 2021 through 2023 but a bit below 44% in 2020.

From a high of 43% in 2020, only 34% of this year’s respondents say they’re offering online quoting to clients, and only 15% of them offer online binding. That number is largely consistent over the past five survey years. Not surprisingly, firms with 100 or more employees are more likely to use both online quoting (41%) and online binding (23%).

Only 14% of 2024 respondents say they make use of online chat services with human operators, and just 11% use automated online chat services and chatbots.

Meanwhile, 38% of 2024 respondents say they use none of these methods to close transactions, on par with the prior three years but nine percentage points higher than 2020.

Feature image courtesy of iStock/xp3rt5