BHSI targets middle market and SME growth through programs and MGAs

Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance (BHSI) has set its sights on the middle market and SME segments with the carrier seeing plenty of opportunities to form partnerships with programs and MGAs, president and CEO Peter Eastwood has told The Insurer TV.

BHSI was formed in 2013, and since launch the business has been built “disproportionately” around the large account and upper middle market sectors, Eastwood said.

But BHSI is now looking to broaden its client base. “We’ve got a real interest in middle market, and the small to medium enterprises spaces,” Eastwood said.

According to the executive, BHSI has “a lot of opportunity that’s coming our way from the program and MGA space as dislocation has occurred in the marketplace”.

“And so we see meaningful growth opportunities…Using MGAs is a very efficient way for us to get into that SME marketplace,” he said.

The middle market and SME segments are not the only areas of the industry where BHSI has spied opportunities, however.

Because the company is only in its seventh full year of operation, Eastwood said “everywhere in the world is a growth opportunity” for the business.

He pinpointed the UK and Europe as one region that BHSI has “a real growth opportunity”.

“We’ve only been in those markets for about two and a half years,” Eastwood said, noting that BHSI’s timing was “actually quite good”.

The company’s London market-focused team, he said, “is making a big push”, with that unit enjoying a year-on-year growth rate of some 300 percent in 2020.

“We’re pretty bullish,” said Eastwood. “We think there’s a lot of opportunity out there. We view our jobs as showing up every day and satisfying the needs of the brokers that we do business with.

He added: “That need is greater than it’s been since the time we launched the business, and our job is to put ourselves in the position where those parties want to do business with us, and we’re working hard at it.”