New Markets

Insurance Journal’s MyNewMarkets Web site offers 20,000 markets

The free, interactive Web site, launched Feb. 12, already boasts more than 1,500 members

Property/casualty agents looking for new markets and suppliers with markets to offer have a dynamic new online meeting place.

Now agents and brokers, managing general agents (MGA) and insurance companies can communicate through Insurance Journal’s powerful and user-friendly MyNewMarkets Web site (www.mynewmarkets.com), which launched earlier this month.

The site offers continually updated property/casualty insurance product and program listings and a daily e-mail with the latest offerings, so members stay ahead of the curve on market opportunities and trends.

And the best part — it’s free.

Numbers growing

The site database already has more than 20,000 property/casualty listings — standard, specialty, excess and surplus — from all across the country, said Adam Dunford, associate publisher of MyNewMarkets. One recent MyNewMarkets daily e-mail contained news about markets for flood, commercial umbrella, specialty homeowners and workers’ compensation. Another single day’s listings included markets for public entities, motorcycles, manufactured homes, personal umbrellas and more.

MyNewMarkets has also already attracted 1,550 participating members, with the numbers growing each day, Dunford noted. Current MyNewMarkets Web site members include independent agents and brokers (60 percent), managing general agents and wholesalers (30 percent) with insurance carriers making up the additional 10 percent.

“Insurance Journal’s MyNewMarkets Web site offers tremendous opportunities for all industry sectors and is such a plus because it opens the lines of communication among all the interested parties,” said Mark Wells, president of Wells Publishing Co., publisher of Insurance Journal and MyNewMarkets.

Early users of the site attest to the ease-of-use and power.

“Filling out the template to add your market information is less complicated to use than any of the new market sites we have tried,” said Riley Binford, senior vice president of Tangram Insurance Services, California. “And as soon as our market is posted or goes out in the daily e-mail, we begin to receive calls from interested agents. We have hired two brokers just to handle the new business.”

Expert information

Users have found they can also rely on the integrity and relevance of the information as well.

“When I go into Insurance Journal’s MyNewMarkets I know the information will be at a higher standard than any other Web site I could access,” said Jennifer Schoenthal, underwriter and program developer for Professional Program Insurance Brokerage in California. “I can count on the information I am getting and it doesn’t have extraneous material I don’t need — which saves time. The information is organized, accurate and basically it feels as if I am checking with an expert when I access this Web site.”

The site includes an “Open Community Forum” where agents can post questions about a new market, query whether a market exists, or ask about an existing market. MGAs or carriers can respond through the Web site forum or call the agents directly.

“We have responded on the forum and also just used the site as a great marketing tool because you can see who is posting and where certain markets are headed,” said Schoenthal. “MyNewMarkets has dual capabilities and we utilize it both ways.”

The new Web site is designed to make both announcing and searching for a new market as easy as possible. The template to place a new market “makes putting in the right information a snap,” Dunford added. The site allows subscribers to edit any information.

Paid advertising that accompanies the daily e-mails is available to any interested company, agency or agent.

Visit www.mynewmarkets.com for instructions on how to become a free subscriber and receive the daily e-mails.