He added, however, that he has found insurers that get back to him with an answer about whether they'll sign on to a new program within 30 days usually know what they're doing. “The people that drag it out, get too many people involved in the decision-making…really can't execute on what they say they can do,” he said.

Greg Thompson, chairman and CEO of THOMCO in Kennesaw, Ga., added that stability and ethics are characteristics he seeks in a carrier partner.

“How long has this company been around? How long is this management team going to be around? And what are the ethics of the group of people that we're going to be doing business with, all the way up to the top of the organization?” he said.

During an NU interview, Mr. Thompson noted that no matter how a contract reads and how a program administrator may think it protects them, “the reality is the carrier can make your life very difficult.”

“So you really have to rely a lot on the quality and ethics of the management team–and your assessment of how long they're likely to be there,” he said, noting that some carriers are notorious for “a revolving door in management.”

“We also actually look for a carrier that has discipline,” he continued. “We always intend to make money for our companies, but if they allow some administrator to take advantage of them–and sell cheap insurance or not properly underwrite it–ultimately, if they lose their financial rating, that will hurt us.”

Participating on the TMPAA panel, he repeated these concerns. “We are in a volatile industry, and what can be true one day in terms of a relationship can change pretty abruptly the next without anything being done adversely on the part of the program administrator,” he said.

Mr. McKernan agreed. “We MGAs are very entrepreneurial. We stay in our positions forever. I'd like to see a survey of how many company executives have been at the same company for more than five years. And have they been in the same position?”

He said program administrators deal with management changes at carrier partners all the time. “We get comfortable with somebody,” and suddenly that person's no longer there, he noted. “That's very hard for us, because then we're starting from scratch–from day one.”

He added that “at the end of the day, we look at the people. If you trust them, they trust you, then you're going to follow those people…as long as they end up with a carrier or financial partner that has the backing to do it.”

During the session, an on-site audience poll actually didn't entirely confirm the perception of frequent turnover in carrier executives during the last five years. Fifty-two percent of the program administrators attending the session said insurance company personnel on their programs had been in the same positions for five years or longer, while the other 48 percent said personnel had changed.

Stephen Porcelli, senior vice president for Hudson Insurance Group in New York, speculated that timing was a factor influencing the survey result. “I wonder how much of that is the result of the fact that we've just come out of a hard market,” he said, observing that “carrier people tend to move around in a soft market.”

Responses to other questions gathered on-site by Benfield–a London-based reinsurance intermediary and a strategic partner of the association–during the session titled “Strategies for Surviving the Soft Market,” indicated some other areas where program administrators and their carrier partners aren't totally aligned in their thinking about business strategies.

For example, while 60 percent of program administrators said they view loss control as a valuable tool, giving them a competitive edge during the soft market, 56 percent also said their carrier partners don't all compensate them for loss control efforts.

Ninety-seven percent said they would increase efforts in loss control if carriers compensated them sufficiently.

During an NU interview, Mr. Thompson, who is the president of TMPAA, said his firm uses loss control services as a big differentiator on programs with larger premium accounts.

He cited as one example a senior living program called “THOMCO University.” The online program allows a nurse at a senior living facility to go online and get protocols for issues such as handling medication and mitigating slip-and-fall exposures. It also has information explaining how to report an incident if the facility has one, and how to deal with it publicly. “There are even courses online that they can take for continuing education,” Mr. Thompson noted.

“We feel these types of efforts have not only helped our clients from a risk management perspective, but it's also given us much needed public relations with the client, even though the business is being produced through [retail] producers,” he said.

Mr. Thompson also listed the following strategies among those he uses at THOMCO to deal with soft market pressures:

o Increased sales training and incentives for THOMCO's people.

Mr. Thompson described the incentives as recognition rather than monetary. “If you give big monetary incentives, carriers become concerned they're going to try to sell any policy in order to write business, and their loss ratio will eventually feel that effect.”

o Asking carriers for more commission.

“Where we have very good loss ratios, we're going to the carriers and saying, you're making money but we're not–or not as much as we used to. We're only asking that where their loss ratio would allow additional commission and they can still make money,” he said, adding that carriers have been fairly receptive to the requests so far.

o Incentives for retailers.

“In one industry we insure where only a small number of agents handle the bulk of the business, we've come up with an incentive plan to really attract those large producers to partner with us,” Mr. Thompson said.

o More face time.

“We're traveling more and we're spending more. We're focusing more on our customer service,” he said.