Broker profile: 'I've never worked in a soft market'

Brisbane-based Marsh Senior Sales Executive Kate Martin says broking is a creative way to spend her days, with plenty of variety and surprise.

What is your role at Marsh?

I work in the new business team for anything that is not a giant corporation at the top end of town, a team of around 30 nationally that I am part of.

It is a new initiative at Marsh that has been up and running for just under 12 months and I have been in the role nine months now. It is has been really great, there is organised focus in certain sectors that we want to penetrate, and then there is also a lot of free rein to reach out to businesses and industries that I feel I can offer really good solutions for.

I can go after whatever I want. I’m still within the first year of new business, so I’m trying to have a little bit of variety, work out my niches and my underwriter contacts for some of the special risks.

Marsh has the lion’s share of that top end of town and so when you look at that, there’s not a lot of potential. All of the growth is in the sector segments below that – certainly in the commercial space and corporate in that sort of middle-to-high market – there is growth there. Our goal is to sit across those two divisions.

It is quite creative – in how I get intros, how I formulate relationships and use my colleagues to deliver the best of Marsh. My previous role was everyday, run of the mill servicing. This is a lot more creative with a lot of variety.

I walked in today with a to do list and one of my managers said ‘We need to focus on the timber industry,’ so that has been my morning! I didn’t wake up thinking I was going to do that – a deep dive into the timber industry and working out which prospects are going to a conference tomorrow to see if Marsh are introducing ourselves and following up.

Everything is always moving. Timing is the name of the game – sometimes it falls in your favour and other times it doesn’t. I’m learning that and not taking it to heart because there’s nothing I can do about it.

How did you come to work in insurance?

I started in the industry in 2013 as a claims consultant at Gallagher Bassett doing strata insurance claims. Strata gets very complicated, a lot of people involved – you’ve got property managers, real estate agents, body corporate committees.

It was before the cladding – a lot of Queensland risks, cyclical with storms. It was a great job. It was just that as I got better at it, my role became more around long tail complex, problematic (claims), with everyone involved with the work – and emotionally involved. It was a good learning experience but it sort of burnt me a little bit.

Noone wants to spend their spare time arguing about insurance claims, that’s sort of what it ended up being like. I said “I’ll never work in insurance again!”

Insurance is very incestuous and I had an aunt who worked in the industry and she knew that the Marsh team was hiring and she knew my opinions, which were very ill informed about the industry and the claims experience. When that opportunity came up to give broking a go for Marsh it was a whole new side of it – very corporate, very unemotional, which I liked.

She encouraged me. She said for personality fit and company fit, Marsh have really great female senior leaders, especially the Brisbane team. She said it would be a perfect fit and she was right. That was October 2016.

What have the five years since been like?

I did energy and power, that was my foot in the door with Marsh, then I transferred to what we call the risk management team, which is that top end of town, the ASX listed.

When it comes to commercial, it is in that corporate end of town that I feel we’re a little bit special. I feel I’m delivering Marsh as a streamlined solution. Insurance broking is sort of just one part of it. Some of the services that we’re delivering as part of that is where the magic happens.

The conversations I have are very rarely swooping in and completely overhauling a programme. Prospects just want to explore options and I have to respect that.

I tend to focus more on the higher end of the corporate space because I feel Marsh can really deliver that whole package service – we’ve got brand new focus on ESG, working with the risk consultancy team around that piece. I’m certainly having conversations with prospects to see if they want something that makes them stand out. They don’t even have to be a client.

We’ve got in-house valuations, forensic accountancy services – all the stuff that used to have to go to third parties through a broker and get a little bit complex.

Cyber risk is massive at the moment, our specialised team can do that consulting piece.

How is the insurance climate? Are we exiting the hard market?

It depends on the line. It’s evolving but for listed companies, there are certain pockets that are critical. That’s where we’ve got the specialist teams that know the underwriters really well, and know the bigger picture. It’s not just about that one program in the market, it’s playing the chess pieces to make sure everything goes smoothly in negotiations.

I started broking at the end of 2016, and 2017 was when it started to turn (hard). So I’ve never really worked in the soft market – in fact a couple years ago, I remember asking my Managing Principal “What did you guys do in a soft market?”.

He just said the underwriters are eager for business, so you go to more lunches, but you have to be mindful of relationships. It’s not about money, it’s about the conditions of the policy as well.

I’m eager to see what a true soft market is like, because even though it is sort of plateauing I don’t think we’re in the depths of the market at all.

How do you spend weekends?

I really enjoy going to community AFL games, picnics, bushwalking, going out, music gigs and things. What is it? DINKs – Double Income No K ids.

Last weekend I went to a place called Bunya Mountains. It is a “cold tourism” thing that Brisbane people do – going up, lighting a fire, having marshmallows. It’s nice for a couple of days but it was nice as we drove off the mountain and the degrees just kept going up.