Our Underwriters Communicate and Connect for Successful Partnerships
Physicians Insurance has been defending its Members in medical professional liability since its founding 40 years ago. Today, we’re working nationally and with a clear purpose: to protect, defend, and support our Members with our expertise, commitment, and people-first approach. In today’s dynamic marketplace, strong relationships are the key to mutual success—for us, for our Members, and for our brokers—and our underwriters understand the importance of fostering solid rapport and trust to help everyone reach their common goals.
We talked to two underwriting team members to see how those core values play out in their relationships with brokers. Associate Vice President of Underwriting Svetlana Sedukhin and Underwriter Director Mary Beth Bowles each have 20 years of experience in medical malpractice insurance and have each been with Physicians Insurance for over five years. Along with the rest of our national underwriting team, they strive to empower brokers to excel.
Why are long-term relationships valuable in this industry?
Mary Beth: Our industry is facing considerable headwinds, including shifting healthcare economics, changing dynamics between patients and physicians, and industry loss pressures, just to name a few. Building long-term relationships with brokers allows us to learn from each other and adapt to changing conditions together.
How does your team build strong relationships with brokers?
Svetlana: We believe the foundation of a strong relationship lies in effective communication, expertise, and accessibility. In our daily work, we prioritize open dialogue, ensuring that brokers feel heard and valued. That’s how we discover and bring the nuances of complex underwriting issues and scenarios to the surface—then we can find solutions collaboratively. We’re a learning organization, so we thrive on exchanging industry knowledge with our broker partners about market insights and product offerings. Every opportunity to learn from each other makes the partnership stronger and more successful. And by maintaining a reliably transparent and expertise-driven approach, we hope to create trust and an active environment for discussing our Members’ needs and challenges.
Mary Beth: I like to ask my brokers, “What keeps you up at night?” and, “What’s keeping your clients up at night?” Then I drill down to find solutions within the scope of our products and services. Our team recognizes the competitive landscape and the pressures that brokers are facing. We want to be the partner who helps them build their business in the long term.
How does your team work with brokers to find solutions?
Mary Beth: Every new member is different. They all have a story. And the account, the broker, and Physicians Insurance all have goals. It’s my job as an underwriter to learn that story and, for us as a team, to use our internal resources and knowledge to provide the right solution to address the goals of all three. It always comes down to a deep knowledge of our product and the industry, and to productive communication with our brokers.
Physicians Insurance has grown a lot in the last decade. How does your team provide personal service at scale?
Svetlana: We’re building on a solid foundation, so our approach doesn’t change, no matter the size or location of our Members. What we’re scaling is the expertise, knowledge, and drive to be a successful partner—which is culturally embedded in the way we work. Our underwriters maintain an outstanding commitment to our Members and broker partners, taking the time to understand the challenges they’re facing and to celebrate successes together. It’s important to us to cultivate and enjoy that shared ownership, since we’re working together with our Members and broker partners to scale success and reach our mutual goals.
What do brokers value about working with Physicians Insurance?
Svetlana: We get feedback from brokers that they value working with Physicians Insurance for several reasons. They appreciate our open and productive dialogue, responsive and personalized attention, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing. We’re delighted to witness that, through this approach, our underwriters are considered valuable allies in meeting evolving Member needs. There are so many market dynamics taking place today, but we’re in this together—and strong relationships are what will lead us all to long-term success with mutual, organic, and profitable growth.