Many insurers and MGAs have good broker relationships, good service and genuine expertise. But if brokers describe your strengths using the same language they use for everyone else — “good people”, “good service”, “easy to deal with” — your brand hasn’t created a clear enough reason to choose you. In a crowded broker panel, vague goodwill is not enough. The firms that win will be those that give brokers a story they can understand, remember and repeat.

Your brokers like you. But can they explain why? 

In the intermediary insurance market, distinction is everything – and yet almost nobody has it. Ask your top ten brokers why they choose you and odds on, they’ll describe your closest competitors just the same. Good people, good service, good relationship. Market expertise. Of course it’s true – but the same could probably be said of half the market, too. None of it is a reason to choose you.

If your brokers struggle to define why it is that they’re working with you, you’re almost certainly not doing enough commercial work. The problem isn’t your product, or even your marketing. It’s that the thing that makes your company genuinely different – the human truth beneath the proposition – has never been properly uncovered, named, or built into the way you communicate. 

Key takeaways

• Broker preference depends on memory, trust and clear reasons to choose.
• Generic service and relationship claims are not enough.
• Intermediaries need language they can repeat.
• Brand work should help brokers understand and explain value.
• The problem is often internal alignment before external campaign execution.

Liked is not the same as chosen

A maxim to kick things off: “They like us” is not the same as “they choose us”. Liking can be passive. Choice is active. Brand has to convert goodwill into preference, and while relationship strength helps, it doesn’t always scale. Plus it’s all just a bit too vague.

The fact is, brokers are overwhelmed with similar propositions. Many claims sound the same. You know the kind of thing we mean:

• Expertise
• Service
• Partnership
• Specialist knowledge
• Flexibility
• Underwriting appetite
• Broker-first
• Claims excellence

These may well all be true, but they’re not distinctive unless they’re expressed through a specific human truth (we’ll come onto this in a short while). And this bland, same-as-everyone-else language comes at a price.

The hidden cost of generic broker language

When your brand makes the same claims as everyone else, it means that every campaign starts from a weak foundation. Every BDM conversation sounds like the last one. And when brokers can’t articulate why they choose you, they default to familiarity or price.

Your brand pays the price of this lost consideration and lower campaign efficiency – and at a time when Consumer Duty has made clear communication more urgent than ever. Regulators are now asking firms to demonstrate genuine value in plain, human language. Most are treating it as a compliance exercise, but those getting ahead are treating it as the clearest brand brief the sector has ever been gifted.

Brokers aren’t a channel. They’re people.

Which brings us onto another important point. Too many FS brands treat intermediaries as a distribution channel – a mechanism for moving product. Because when you’re focused on sales figures, it’s easy to forget that brokers are real people with feelings – and conflicting demands on their time and energy.

Working with brokers, you have two human beings to consider in every interaction: the broker themselves, and their end client. Both are people, and both respond to being understood. And while end clients might sometimes be stressed out and struggling, they’re not the only ones. Brokers have all kinds of pressures of their own: client relationships to nurture, regulations to satisfy and reputations on the line every time they make a recommendation.

Lead with that understanding, and you’ve already won.

Why broker-facing insurance brands struggle to differentiate

“Our brokers can’t explain why they choose us.” 

“We look and sound like everyone else.”

“We’ve grown, but our brand hasn’t kept up.”

Sound familiar? The truth is that the differentiation problem is often internal before it’s external. Your product marketing team can doubtless tell you everything about your product. The policy wording. The rate. The processing time. All of it in detail. That’s a good thing. But can they say with equal clarity what any of this genuinely means for the person on the other end of that product? What it changes for them, what it makes possible?

If your internal teams can’t articulate your difference, it’s a bit optimistic to expect brokers to do so.

The brand test: can a broker repeat your advantage?

Here’s a simple way to assess whether your value proposition is actually cutting through. Imagine you’ve just met with a broker. Two days later, they’re speaking to a client about potential providers. Without looking at your website, brochure, or sales deck, could they clearly explain what makes you different?

If the answer is “we offer great service”, “we put customers first”, or “we provide tailored solutions”, you may have a problem. As we’ve seen, these claims are so common across the market that they’ve reached the point of banality, and will do nothing to distinguish you from your competitors.

A stronger and more clearly worded advantage is one that brokers can repeat in a single sentence, while being meaningful enough to influence a buying decision. 

Crucially, it should also be difficult for competitors to copy and paste. A rule of thumb: if your advantage could appear unchanged on another firm’s website, it probably isn’t distinctive enough.

What stronger broker-facing insurance brands do differently

The best broker-facing brands help brokers answer questions like:

• Why this insurer?
• Why this product?
• Why should my client trust this route?
• Why should I risk my reputation recommending them?

But how exactly do they do this? Here’s a framework your firm could use.

1. They define a specific broker problem.
2. They identify a credible advantage.
3. They turn it into simple language.
4. They give BDMs, underwriters and marketing teams the same story.
5. They repeat it through campaigns, content and conversations.

Maybe try starting it with something small, like emails – they’re a bit more personal, after all. Then scale the approach across all your assets: website, comms, text messages, the lot.

What this looks like in practice

Here’s how we’ve made this approach work across a couple of campaigns for one of our clients in the intermediary insurance market.

Travelers Europe — Schemes

Travelers Europe came to us for help with launching a new proposition that would take them into the previously unchartered waters of schemes. With no profile, no obvious USP and a broker audience loyal to established players, our approach focused on finding the human truth: brokers as entrepreneurial partners. 

We built a campaign around the idea of “Inspired by you, insured by us” – and the numbers are proof that communicating on a human level works. 150% of target leads, 1,216% ROI, delivered a quarter ahead of schedule, within 88% of budget. As the client commented: “They brought our ‘Insuring Ambition’ brand promise to life and developed a unique campaign that stands apart from the competition.”

Willis Towers Watson Affinity

Working with global firm Willis Towers Watson Affinity, we used human-to-human communication to address the challenge that its InsurTech and affinity capabilities were invisible behind its better-known broking reputation. Responding with a bold thought leadership platform built around a central truth – the idea of ‘Never Settle’ and ‘Acceptable is Unacceptable’ – we successfully repositioned WTW Affinity as a category challenger and achieved the strongest CPC and CTR performance in the campaign’s history. WTW’s Head of Marketing Patricia Antúnez even commented that it was “The loudest voice WTW Affinity has ever had in a crowded market.” Just goes to show the power of being human.

Over to you

If your brokers like you but can’t explain why they work with you, it may be time to turn your advantage into a clearer, more memorable broker-facing story. The FS brands that talk about themselves sometimes survive. The ones that talk to their audience – about their world, their challenges, their ambitions – they’re the ones that thrive. Give us a shout if you’d like our help becoming an insurance brand that brokers actively choose.

FAQs

What is broker-facing insurance marketing?

Broker-facing insurance marketing refers to the strategies, campaigns and communications used by insurers, MGAs and other providers to engage intermediaries such as brokers, rather than targeting end customers directly. The idea of it is to help brokers understand, remember and recommend a proposition by clearly communicating the value and differentiators that make a provider worth choosing.

Why do insurance brands struggle to differentiate?

Many insurance brands rely on similar messages around service, expertise, relationships and customer focus. While these qualities are important, they’re rarely unique, making it difficult for brokers to distinguish one provider from another. Effective differentiation requires a clear, specific proposition that brokers can easily understand, recall and explain to their clients.

How can MGAs build stronger broker relationships?

Strong broker relationships are built through consistency, trust and clear communication. Beyond providing competitive products and responsive service, MGAs should help brokers understand exactly where they add value and why they’re the right choice for particular risks or client needs. The easier it is for brokers to articulate that value, the stronger the relationship becomes.

How can brand help brokers understand our proposition?

A strong brand creates clarity. It gives brokers a simple and memorable way to understand what makes you different, who you’re best suited to serve, and why you deserve consideration. When branding and messaging are aligned around a clear proposition, brokers are more likely to remember it, repeat it, and use it as a reason to choose you over your competitors.

What makes a broker-facing campaign effective?

An effective broker-facing campaign focuses on relevance and differentiation rather than visibility alone. It should communicate a clear advantage, address challenges brokers face in their day-to-day work, and provide messages that are easy to understand and share. The most successful campaigns generate preference, not just awareness, and help brokers confidently explain why a provider stands out.