Rancho Mesa's Alyssa Burley and Surety Relationship Executive Anne Wright discuss a best practice for growing a contractor’s surety program.

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Director/Host: Alyssa Burley

Guest: Anne Wright

Editor/Producer: Megan Lockhart

Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “News Room News” by Spence

Transcript

[Introduction Music]

Alyssa Burley: Hi! This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa’s Media Communications and Client Services Department. Thank you for listening to today’s top Rancho Mesa news brought to you by our safety and risk management network, StudioOne™. Welcome back, everyone. My guest is Anne Wright, Surety Relationship Executive with Rancho Mesa. Today, we're going to talk about communication as a best practice for growing a contractor surety program. Anne, welcome to the show.

Anne Wright: Thanks, Alyssa. It's good to be back.

AB: Now, you may have heard in some of our previous podcast episodes that we like to start out with a couple of rapid fire, this or that questions. Are you up for it?

AW: Depending on the topic. I've had coffee, but we'll see how it goes.

AB: All right. Do you prefer board games or card games?

AW: Card games.

AB: Television series or movie?

AW: Movie.

AB: Paperback books or e-books?

AW: Paperback.

AB: Me too. Pancakes or waffles?

AW: Waffles.

AB: Morning person or night owl?

AW: Depends on the day.

AB: Okay. Fair enough. All right. So, let's get into some of the surety topics that we're going to discuss today. So, listeners may or may not know that the security client agent underwriter relationship is different from other lines of insurance. The contractor may be interacting with the surety more often, depending on the number of bonds that they need, then they would their normal worker's compensation or general liability carrier. So, what are a handful of important best practices that a contractor should know in order to secure the best relationship with their surety?

AW: Well, key points would be receipt of timely information, accurate information, and regular communication between all of us. If you are a small contractor or not necessarily small, but an infrequent bond user, we can get you in a, what we call, an express program with different surety companies that can go up to about $500,000. There's not a whole lot of communication that's necessary for that. It's filling out an app, giving them a little information on what the job is, how that relates to the work you've done before. But it's kind of a quick and easy way to get your bonding needs met. But as your company grows and maybe you need more frequent bonds, larger bonds, we get you in an established program with a standard surety company. There's more information that we're going to be asking about. We're going to obtain those financials regularly. We're going to review and analyze the work in progress to make sure that the job profitability is holding. If there are any issues with cash flow, if there's any troubled projects or general contractors or owners that you're working for. How is your cash flow management for the work you need to do? We just kind of get into the weeds a little bit as to what the operations are so we can explain that to the underwriter and be the conduit. Our job as your agent is to use our experience and our relationships to make sure we accurately communicate that information so that the surety can get to a yes.

AB: Right, so they fully understand what you're doing.

AW: Right.

AB: Will you give us an example of why communication is so important? I guess that's kind of leading into what you're talking about. Why is it so important to have those lines of communication…?

AW: Yeah, I mean, if you're transactional, again, it's not so important. But we really wanted to again, use our resources to develop the relationship for the long term. And some underwriters are more diligent, I guess, about asking for that information. Some clients want to have more direct feeling of a relationship with their underwriters. So, we might bring the underwriter in annually to talk to the contractor, meet you, or if there's a larger job you want to pursue, maybe we bring the underwriter in to kind of get more information on how this is going to proceed, why it is a good idea for you. So, it's really an opportunity to allow us to be that conduit to facilitate the information, the surety underwriter, and make sure that all your needs are met and your company can grow if you need bonding support.

AB: Is that pretty typical to bring in an underwriter to meet the owners of maybe the company?

AW: It is if you are in the standard surety market.

AB: Ok.

AW: Yeah. And it- COVID, of course, did what COVID did and, you know, meetings kind of fell off the track a little bit. But, yeah, anytime we can get the underwriter in front of the client, it makes the world of difference when that outside the norm need comes up.

AB: Right. I think it makes the company more three dimensional when they actually get to meet the people that are doing it.

AW: Absolutely. Yeah.

AB: Versus just see them on paper.

AW: Yeah. Black and white numbers and you know, we feel, you know, at Rancho Macho, that we do a really good job of the communication with our underwriters. There's nothing more satisfying than sending a request to the surety company after we've asked all the questions of our client and then coming back and saying, you know, thanks for all the details, the bond is approved, without a lot of back and forth and having to go back and nickel and dime the client for more information. So, you know, we ask that our clients be understanding of that and patient and tolerant. And, you know, we're doing this for a reason. We want to make the job easier for them.

AB: Yeah, and we want to get them approved. So, if listeners have questions about their surety program, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

[Outro Music]

AW: They can, of course, email me at awright@ranchomesa.com or give me a call at 619-486-6970.

AB: All right. Well Anne, thank you so much for joining me in StudioOne™.

AW: You're welcome. Thank you.

AB: This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa. Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne™. For more information, visit us at ranchomesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.