Turning Risk Control Into a Competitive Advantage

Story Overview

A manufacturing company with multiple U.S. production facilities faced mounting cost pressures as tariffs and other operating expenses tightened budgets. At renewal, the client wanted to reduce insurance costs without sacrificing protection for its high-value manufacturing operations, where a major property loss could significantly disrupt production.

Challenge

The client’s property program covered multiple facilities containing specialized machinery, critical infrastructure, and high-value inventory. While property insurance rates had begun to soften, securing meaningful savings required more than waiting for market conditions to improve. The client needed a strategy that would demonstrate the strength of its risk management practices, differentiate its operations to underwriters, and create competitive pressure among insurers while maintaining appropriate coverage and limits.

A proactive risk strategy and structured underwriting engagement reduced premiums by 13% while strengthening coverage where it mattered most.

IMA’s Strategy and Actions

IMA’s Risk Control team acted to support the client by:

• Helping implement an emergency flood response plan more than a year before renewal, strengthening the client’s overall risk profile and operational resilience.
• Beginning the renewal marketing process approximately 180 days before renewal, creating sufficient time to engage multiple carriers and build competition.
• Coordinating property reviews across multiple facilities with four insurance carriers, managing complex scheduling and stakeholder participation.
• Developing detailed property profiles that highlighted facility protections, business continuity planning, preventative maintenance programs, and operational resiliency.
• Preparing client leaders to address underwriting questions with accurate, defensible information and supporting follow-up responses.
• Showcasing risk control measures that reduced the likelihood and severity of property losses, helping carriers better understand the client’s operations.
• Managing facility reviews and underwriting engagement so the account team could focus on coverage design, deductible analysis, program structure, and negotiations with competing carriers.

Why It Worked

IMA combined deep operational knowledge of the client’s facilities with strong relationships across both the client organization and insurance carriers. By anticipating underwriting concerns, helping the client present its risk profile effectively, and coordinating a highly organized review process, the Risk Control and account teams helped underwriters gain confidence in the risk and created a more competitive renewal environment.

The team’s proactive approach, including advance risk mitigation efforts and an early renewal strategy, ensured underwriters had both the time and confidence needed to evaluate the account favorably.

Key Takeaways

This story demonstrates how effective risk control can influence insurance outcomes beyond standard renewal negotiations. By understanding the client’s operations in detail and helping underwriters see the full picture of the organization’s risk management efforts, IMA identified an opportunity to improve both pricing and coverage at the same time.