Conference season is when the inbox gets busiest and hardest to read. New faces, old faces, people you swapped cards with at eleven at night over a warm glass of something, all of them now in the same list, sorted by whoever emailed last.
So here's a field guide. It covers the broker types every MGA underwriter has met, how to recognise them, and what each one actually wants from you, which is rarely what it says in the subject line.
It isn't complete. Nobody ever finishes one of these, and birdwatchers will tell you that's half the fun.
The Re:Re:Re: Warbler
Repetitus followupus
Call "Just following up on the below."
Habitat The top of your inbox, briefly, and then the middle of it.
Easily identified by its subject line, which grows a new Re: every few days like rings on a tree. The Warbler isn't being rude. It has a client asking it the same question it's asking you, and every chase is it passing the pressure along.
What it wants is an answer. Any answer. A quick no is worth more to a Warbler than a slow maybe, and Warblers remember which markets declined fast and which ones went silent. In our experience they rarely leave over a declined risk. They leave over the ones nobody answered.
The Lesser-Spotted Bind Instruction
Bindus obscurus
Call "Happy to proceed, can you confirm?"
Habitat Shared submissions mailboxes, usually about forty emails down.
Strictly speaking this is an email rather than a broker, but it's the rarest and most valuable thing in the guide, so it gets an entry. Its camouflage is excellent. It tends to turn up as a reply in an old thread, under a subject line from a quote three weeks ago, looking exactly like a servicing query. Inboxes sort by recency because recency is the only thing they know, so a bind instruction from Tuesday sits under a certificate request from this morning.
What it wants is to be noticed before the other market notices it. That's all. It's on a clock, and the broker has usually already told the client it's sorted.
The Quiet Producer
Producer tacitus
Call None recorded after week six.
Habitat Your onboarding list from the spring.
Abundant for the first fortnight after onboarding. Two submissions, a friendly intro call, talk of doing more together. Then sightings drop off sharply, and most teams put it down to a slow start.
It usually isn't. The first six weeks are when a broker decides whether you're easy to deal with, and it's running the same test on two or three other markets at once. It's scoring how long an answer takes and whether it's the same answer twice. Appetite barely comes into it, which is the bit underwriters find hardest to believe.
What it wants is to have been answered quickly in March. Whether they come back at renewal, we don't know. Some do. We've stopped guessing which.
The Single-Perch Finch
Davidus solus
Call "Hi Dave,"
Habitat One underwriter's inbox, whatever the class of business.
Only ever emails one person. Property, casualty, a question about last month's bordereau, a risk that's plainly for another team: all of it goes to Dave, because Dave took them to lunch in 2019 and once picked up the phone at half four on a Friday.
It's a lovely relationship right up until Dave goes on holiday, or leaves, and the Finch goes with him.
What it wants is Dave. Failing that, someone who already knows its history before it has to explain it again. Worth checking who your Finches are perched on now, rather than the week after the leaving drinks.
The Conference Flock
Gregarius conferentiae
Call "Great to meet you last week!"
Habitat Your inbox, in large numbers, for about ten days after any conference.
Arrives all at once. Each member sends one submission, usually something slightly odd, "to test the water". Most return to the wild by Christmas. A few become your best relationships of the next three years, and there's no way to tell which from the first email.
What it wants is to find out what you're like to deal with, cheaply. Judge the Flock on the second submission. The first one is the test, and the second is the broker deciding you passed.
The Great Crested Volume Broker
Volumus maximus
Call Constant.
Habitat Everywhere, at once.
Loud, impressive, sends everything to everyone. Easy to mistake for your best relationship because it's the one you hear from most. Check the hit rate before you check the volume. The broker who sends you the most is quite often not the one you'd miss most, and a few distribution leaders won't enjoy reading that.
Not pictured
The broker who reads the appetite guide before submitting. Several sightings reported. None confirmed.
How to use this guide
Take your list of producing firms (the actual list, not the one in the CRM) and put a bird next to each name. It takes about twenty minutes and is oddly satisfying.
The useful part is the ones you can't place. A firm you can't classify is a firm nobody on the team has looked at properly for a while, and that's usually where the Quiet Producers are hiding.
For what it's worth, working out which producing brokers need attention this week, and who should pick each one up, is the job BindSignal's weekly email does. The birds are optional.