Berkley Medical Excess Underwriters

Our Exclusive Focus

[Who Are We?] [What Do We Do?] [How Do We Do It?]

Any successful organization needs to have a clear definition and precise understanding of their position within the marketplace. BerkleyMed focuses exclusively on excess professional liability coverage and service needs of hospitals and healthcare organizations. But, let’s look more closely at who we are, what we do, and how we do it.

BerkleyMed can be defined by the following characteristics:

Who Are We?

BerkleyMed is committed to serving hospitals and healthcare organizations exclusively.
BerkleyMed is part of the Berkley “Alternative Markets Segment.” As a part of this group, our focus is on supporting customers who have elected to self insure their professional liability risks. Our concentrated focus is part of our strategy to provide the knowledge and expertise our clients desire. We believe that by bringing our customers identifiable cost savings support we will set the foundation for a long term relationship.
BerkleyMed functions as part of a Fortune 500 holding company. However, we operate as a separate insurance company within the W.R. Berkley Group. We are responsible for our own operating strategy, capital and business performance. As a result, we maintain a true entrepreneurial focus on being close to our customers and brokers. At W.R. Berkley, we believe this decentralized structure sets us apart from our competitors who operate as underwriting departments or division of large centralized organizations. We are not a division or product underwriting unit, and this benefits both our brokers and clients.

What Do We Do?

BerkleyMed adds value to our client programs and broker relationships using our knowledge and experience as a focused national underwriter of hospital professional liability coverage and as a leading provider of supporting cost saving services.

How Do We Do It?

BerkleyMed’s investment in data and knowledge provides valuable intellectual capital for our brokers and clients. The result is that we help our clients achieve optimal outcomes by providing decision support data and actionable solutions focused on lowering loss costs. This enables us to forge long-term partnerships with brokers and clients, thereby benefiting all parties.

As a leading professional liability insurance carrier, BerkleyMed is focused solely on the healthcare industry. We service and underwrite excess coverage only for hospitals and healthcare organizations. As a result, we staff only professionals who understand the healthcare industry and we invest only in tools and training that will further our healthcare expertise. This exclusive healthcare focus differentiates us from other excess carriers and provides us a tremendous advantage in servicing our healthcare clients. We strive to set new standards in hospital professional liability insurance and to achieve cooperative, long-term relationships that bring value to our partner organizations.

BerkleyMed takes a multi-faceted underwriting and service approach that is focused on identifying client and broker needs through a variety of internal processes and discussions. We are also striving to set the standard in product creativity and tailored services. Through needs identification, we provide services to our clients ranging from advocacy on identified initiatives to actual design of specific risk solutions.

We are particularly proud of our underwriting capabilities and the resources we have to offer. Ours is a multi-disciplined underwriting approach that incorporates finance, claims, risk management, actuarial, and underwriting expertise. Moreover, the same benchmarking tools and capabilities that are available to our clients are available to our underwriting team. This gives us unique insight into analyzing your risk and pricing your coverage for long term cost stability.

We realize that a self-insured healthcare facility typically maintains and manages the largest portion of the total cost of their risk financing program. By understanding your goals and objectives relating to risk tolerance and cost reduction, we can recommend program structures that best meet your needs and optimize your risk financing program. Our focus is to assist our insureds in minimizing their total cost of risk (TCOR).

This well-defined, operating strategy allows BerkleyMed to remain a long-term player and market leader within the industry. Our hospital and healthcare clients know they can count on us for excess coverage and services regardless of the state of the marketplace. This long-term commitment enables us to support our clients and help insulate them from insurance cycles characterized by chaotic pricing swings and coverage availability. The end result is a much higher degree of stability for any hospital professional liability excess program.

Focusing strictly on hospitals and healthcare business also allows us to be responsible for our own results. We are not forced to subsidize other lines of coverage that may show deteriorating results at points during the market cycles. Moreover, when we invest in tools, technology, and data, we concentrate specifically on hospitals and healthcare organizations. The results of these investments have enabled us to become a more informed and effective underwriter, thereby giving us a better focus when working with our clients.