Specialty insurance marketers operate in a highly complex and crowded market. Financial Promoter hears from two of the largest players in the sector to find out how to make brands stand out.
Specialty insurance refers to bespoke and specific policies for individuals, small businesses, or large corporations.
The term can range from consumables, such as high-value artwork and large shipping containers, to the coverage of developing and launching a rocket into space.
The global specialty insurance market was valued at $104.7bn in 2021 and is projected to reach $279bn by 2031, according to Allied Market Research.
Despite its expansive nature, it is highly complex and nuanced, meaning a marketer needs to find a niche that also speaks to a broad potential client base.
The insurance industry itself is going through a period of high-volume merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, meaning large, global brands with the cash behind them are closing in on the market.
Cara McFadyen joined Gallagher in 2020, launching sub-brand Gallagher Specialty in 2023. She is now the marketing director at Gallagher Specialty.
“The business had existed for years but didn’t have a distinct visual identity to help explain the proposition, which caused confusion about our role within the wider business.
“It was a massive vote of confidence from our global brand team as allowing a change like that can set a tricky precedent.”
With the big brands grappling for wallet share, marketers must find a way to distinguish their brand among competition.
McFadyen predicts not all the current players will endure.
The task at hand
Every marketer knows that identifying a target audience is crucial to success.
Specialty insurance marketers are in the niche position of primarily marketing to brokers, rather than individuals or other insurers.
However, marketing to brokers – who have a specific pathway to building partnerships – is not an easy task.
“Specialty insurance is a 350-year old industry built on relationships,” she says. “I’ve seen some of the older guys do deals on the back of napkins in the pub.”
A marketer’s job is to layer the modern principles of marketing on top of years of relationships and, fundamentally, ensure it is still profitable, she adds.
“Often, marketing is there to solve problems generating business. When there isn’t a problem to solve, that then causes a lack of interest of what the discipline is and what it can do for the business.”
Broking businesses subsequently see marketing as a cost centre, rather than something that can add benefit, and it’s this challenge that keeps McFadyen interested and motivated, she says.
Lynn Harris, global brand leader and head of insurance marketing & communications at AXIS, tells Financial Promoter that a continual dialogue between marketing and other arms of the business is pivotal to success.
“Having an extensive background in the insurance industry helps me to ensure those are meaningful, quality conversations.”
AXIS actively gauges brand perceptions among its key stakeholders – internally and externally – to inform its marketing approach.
Specialty marketing also calls for “distinct and differentiating” marketing opportunities that ensure brands stand out in the competitive landscape, Harris says.
At Gallagher Specialty, McFadyen has focused on shifting the narrative to bridge the gap between key stakeholders and marketers to get them behind marketing activity.
“I flip the narrative away from “cost of activity” to “if we didn’t do this, a million people wouldn’t have seen us.”
Changing this messaging has been particularly successful with C-suite executives, demonstrating that marketers are first and foremost commercially minded.
When first coming into the City of London, McFadyen used the same tact to win over colleagues: “I didn’t come in and say what marketing does, I let them talk about what’s important to them and transposed that into something that suited their needs and met marketing standards.”
Building campaigns
A 2023 study by Accenture found 88% of insurance customers were demanding greater personalisation from their providers.
Developing a rich understanding of the broad range of complex insurance products and solutions, identifying target customers, and considering the continually shifting risk landscape is the starting point of any campaign, says Harris.
Similarly, campaigns at Gallagher Specialty often focus on industry verticals, requiring thorough research and cross-collaboration between departments.
According to McFadyen, the most successful campaigns are the ones led by brokers themselves, rather than run wholly by marketing and sales.
“We are running a campaign on energy, where we have done a lot of research into customer pain points and questions throughout the energy lifecycle,” she says.
McFadyen’s background in design and experience in the short-term rental insurance industry stands her in good stead when constructing personalised and creative campaigns for the specialty market.
Gallagher Specialty’s “cities of the future” campaign, for example, stemmed from McFadyen and her colleagues discussing the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“After reading the book Sapiens, it struck me that humanity keeps going through the same cycle. For example, we have had plagues multiple times, and we have huge struggles throughout history, yet we evolve.”
Translating that into an insurance landscape, McFadyen concluded that, while it might be helpful to understand regional political instability and economic shifts, it’s more important to understand the bigger global picture.
“It’s less about being book-learned and more about how you understand the impact of those things – being able to take a step back and look at the journey,” she says.
A shifting landscape
Insurance, by design, is for when things go wrong. Unless things go awry, individuals and businesses have very limited interactions with their insurance company beyond the initial contract.
In recent years, insurance companies have tried to flip that narrative, says McFadyen.
“There has been a shift towards insurance being about risk mitigation and how we help people, rather than being here to pay the bill when it all goes wrong,” says McFadyen.
“It’s vital that marketing is the voice of the customer and can appeal to the business prospects in a language that they understand.”
Gallagher Specialty’s “cities of the future” campaign – in collaboration with research institute Fitch Solutions – works with that narrative.
The campaign is running from July 2023 to summer 2024, with whitepapers, webinars, and supporting articles being released throughout the year-long partnership.
Collaborating with a research institute opens up a new audience for Gallagher Specialty’s campaign, with the papers revolving around climate change, Covid-19, and other topical events attracting an audience outside of brokers.
“The overarching message across the research is ‘hardship fosters innovation’ at a time when governments face a series of challenges: ensuring economic recovery on the back of Covid-19, pushing forward long-term visions of development, and addressing threats posed by climate change,” says McFadyen.
“Cities are at the heart of these challenges as they are economic engines and population centres.”
The campaign also features another content “layer,” as McFadyen describes, with more informative content for brokers to explain the practicalities of how the trends translate into an insurance environment.
Building campaigns around mainstream topics – and thus increasing readership – aids Gallagher Specialty’s brand awareness among brokers and key insurance stakeholders.
This article is taken from the Winter 2024 print edition of Financial Promoter.
Want to hear more from Cara McFadyen? Find her on the stage at this year’s FP Live! on 18 March. Click here to buy tickets.