Mr. Moore, who is also president of The Southern General Agency Inc. in Bowling Green, Ky., emphasized that what is driving the relationship between carriers and agents now is not market share, but underwriting profitability.

In light of this reality with carriers, he said, what the MGA is looking for from independent agents is a willingness to maintain a long-term relationship. MGAs want to do business with retailers that are serious about doing continued business, instead of just looking to place some business to fix immediate problems they are having, he said.

Joe Hutelmyer, president-elect of AAMGA and president of Burlington, N.C.-based Seaboard Underwriters Inc., said MGAs seek quality business that proves profitable for everyone.

“Most independent retail agents who are in our industry have been in it for eight to ten years,” observed Mr. Hutelmyer. “They have not seen a market like this before, and many of them do not know us or our marketplace.” Their initial response is to take what isnt wanted in the regular market and to place it into the MGA market, Mr. Hutelmyer said.

In an educational seminar held during the conference, titled “Truth and Consequences of the Wholesale Market,” MGAs discussed some of the things that retail agents do to undermine the wholesale relationship.

Jerry Hargrove, president and chief executive officer of Fairgreen Capital, L.P., DBA Northside Insurance in Alpharetta, Ga., led the discussion, observing that the relationship between the wholesale and retail agents should be a “winwin situation” for everyone involved. In this relationship, trust and education are invaluable, said Mr. Hargrove, who is also a former president of the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents.

“If I cant trust you, I cant afford to do business with you,” especially with todays market and legal system, he said. “I cant afford to take that chance.”

“We are not something scary or mysterious,” said Mr. Hutelmyer, at a separate press conference, stressing the need to build better relationships. “We are business people. We operate our agencies like [carriers]. If they [retail agents] would look at us as they do insurance companies, instead of some strange two-headed monsters, we would all be more successful.”

During the educational seminar with Mr. Hargrove, wholesalers and MGAs said that retailers make the relationship difficult by submitting incomplete applications and information that is either incomplete, not updated or illegible.

One question every retail agent should be prepared to answer, said the participating MGAs, is why the agent is bringing the risk to the wholesale market. If it is because it is a bad risk or a non-renewal, they say, the agent should be honest about it initially so the wholesaler knows how to approach the risk or if he or she can help.

Agents must also be prepared to give MGAs a reasonable amount of lead time on a risk, as much as two weeks, at least.

MGAs said it really irks them when agents use them as quoting tools, in some cases, for the sole purpose of making the price increases given by the admitted carriers look better.

“Its just a bad waste of time,” said one MGA.

Mr. Hargrove suggested that from the retailers point of view, MGAs could also do some things to make the relationship better. These included clearly identifying the person a fax is going to, because retail agencies have a lot of clients sending paperwork to a lot of different people within an agency.

He also suggested that when information is missing, identify what that information is and tell the agent what the deadline is for getting it back to the MGA.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, June 2, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.