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What is a Personal Lines Broker? Effectively they are independent insurance businesses who sell insurance products for larger underwriters by using their own marketing capabilities. The advantage Personal Lines Brokers have over their Direct writer counterparts is choice and comparison. Whilst a direct writer will market their product for a specific risk a Personal Lines Broker may have a panel of many competitive rates from different insurance partners.

Ironically some of the large Direct Insurers are also providers of Personal Lines schemes for a nationwide panel of partner brokers which in effect often puts them in competition with their own direct products, Norwich Union Insurance is probably a very good example of this.

Personal Lines Brokers have to build relationships with insurance underwriters in order to get their products to sell and in most cases the broker can earn bespoke discounts off the products screen rate. This basically means that when the broker is quoting the customer a price for a personal lines product they can discount the screen rate (shelf price) by what ever percentage discount they have been given by the underwriter.

Insurance is all about risk and when Personal Lines Brokers have written high volumes of profitable business for the underwriter they can often command better deals on their product discounts. Personal Lines Brokers can range from small niche insurance specialists right through to large companies such a Budget Insurance and Swintons who offer a full range of insurance products including car insurance, home and bike insurance. When dealing with personal lines insurance the reseller can brand the product to their own style a good example is the the niche product ladybird insurance who offer car insurance just for women.

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