Modeling Lets Brokers Differentiate Client Risk Individually

Insurance brokers are gaining the ability to treat each client’s risk separately, a shift driven by advances in artificial intelligence, data, and analytics. Ashley Karg, partner in U.S. casualty at McGill and Partners, explained the change during an interview with Insurance Journal at RIMS RISKWORLD.

“There’s more opportunity for brokers to embrace individualizing our clients as opposed to creating them as part of a pack, or part of a herd,” Karg said.

The technical mechanism behind this shift is straightforward: modeling platforms built by McGill mirror the casualty underwriting process. That gives clients a real-time view of how underwriters will assess their exposures before any formal submission is made. In the past, brokers and clients had to wait for market reactions, then react to a decision already made. Now the sequence flips.

How Individualized Risk Modeling Changes Broker Strategy

The relationship moves from reactive to strategic. Renewal conversations now start with levers such as retentions, captives, or anticipating excess loss. Karg described the benefit directly: “We’re thinking about how to strategize with them on the front end as opposed to the reaction from the marketplace after things have already been done by the underwriter. To rewind that after the fact becomes much more tedious and less efficient.”

For the broker, the value is in controlling the timeline. For the client, it means knowing the trade-offs between price and coverage before the renewal is locked in. For the underwriter, certainty about exposures remains the preferred outcome. All three parties gain from a process that is no longer a black box.