Amid habitational market hardening, HabPro rolls out enhanced program to help agents deliver

By Joe Mossbrook, HabPro Insurance Program Director

With stricter underwriting standards and extensive restrictions across classes and geographies, it’s no secret carriers have been pulling back from the habitational real estate market. Now, as many agents face renewal rates that are 20 or 30 percent higher than previous premiums, producers are left to reevaluate how to bind their accounts — and meet the needs of apartment, condominium and multi-dwelling building owners.

Recognizing these difficult market conditions, our team at HabPro Insurance — a premier provider of real estate insurance, specializing in non-coastal apartment complexes and condominiums on a non-admitted basis — has revamped our program to meet emerging challenges for both agents and insureds in this space.

A superior product with more coverage and capacity

Every great product is rooted in partnership with its stakeholders. Similarly, our foundation of highly successful agent relationships, in conjunction with our expertise in the industry, has helped us build and continually expand our HabPro program according to needs in the market. Working with agents and their clients to address pain points and priorities — including the urgencies they are currently facing — plays a significant role in driving the evolution of our program.

Simply put, while some carriers are retreating from the habitational market, HabPro is strategically running full speed toward it — free of the challenges that many legacy providers face.

To meet the demands of today’s hard habitational property market, we recently teamed up with a market-leading, A+-rated carrier through a proprietary partnership. This new relationship enables us to expand our footprint, write Excess & Surplus risks closer to the coast, provide more diversified coverage options, write larger TIV and schedules on a referral basis, increase capacity and offer new opportunities to place apartment and condo risks.

These enhancements allow us to offer even more robust and competitive package and mono-line property coverage to even more clients — garden style apartments, student housing, condominium associations, multi-family homes and many others — helping agents open new doors when others seem to be slamming shut. Simply put, while some carriers are retreating from the habitational market, HabPro is strategically running full speed toward it — free of the challenges that many legacy providers face.

Fast, top-notch service

While the program must fit the bill, service is always where the rubber meets the road. Our job is to make agents’ jobs easier, and we take that responsibility seriously. That’s why HabPro is distributed through a limited access appointment and provides agents their own dedicated underwriter with expertise in the habitational market. This enables us to take a hands-on approach in helping agents navigate the ever-changing complexities of the industry, ensure 24–48-hour turnaround times and deliver comprehensive service at every juncture, from preparing quotes to issuing policies, fulfilling endorsement, billing and other service requests.

That’s also why we have a dedicated in-house claims handling and management team, which means hassle-free claims and clear communication during what we know is often a dreaded exercise for insureds.

Gold standard service like this — a differentiator for HabPro — can also set agents apart from their competition in the eyes of their clients, making it a win all around.

Flexibility to get the job done

Accounts will always have their own challenges (some more than others), but at HabPro, we see them as opportunities to get creative in finding different ways to bind a policy. In addition to having extensive experience writing policies for traditional and non-traditional accounts, working on a non-admitted basis means we have significantly more flexibility than the standard markets in writing accounts. In fact, we have exclusive forms that help us meet the needs of every apartment and condo risk.

We are often told HabPro is the solution agents have been looking for — which was the case with a new agency we recently appointed in California. In a number of months, we bound more than 40 accounts for this group, totaling more than $500,000 in premium.

The only thing that outshines our capacity to find solutions that work for agents and their clients is our commitment to doing so. When we say we partner with agents, we truly mean it. We put the entire strength of our team behind finding a competitive fit for every account and do whatever it takes to help agents get the job done.

With renewals and future business on the line, agents can’t afford to do just more of the same. Whether it’s tapping into a robust new program, discovering an out-of-the-box approach or joining forces with an insurance partner that is fully invested in their success, our team at HabPro will help them deliver.