Rancho Mesa’s Alyssa Burley sits down with Surety Relationship Executive Anne Wright as she explains the factors that contribute to a building a solid relationship with your surety, and why its important.

Show Notes: ⁠Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter⁠.

Director/Host: Alyssa Burley⁠

Guest: ⁠Anne Wright⁠

Editor/Producer: ⁠Megan Lockhart⁠

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

© Copyright 2024. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Transcript

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 building a productive surety relationship.

Anne, welcome to the show.

Anne Wright: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me back.

AB: Of course. Now, you've represented contractors and developers of all types and sizes for many years and have plenty of examples of what works best for clients to maintain a level of surety support that helps them meet their growth goals and objectives.

So, in your experience, what are the most important things a client could do to ensure that they have a solid relationship with the surety?

AW: Well, to some extent it depends on what their bonding needs are going to be. We have some clients that just need a bond or two a year and they're in some sort of a credit-based only application program. If they want to grow beyond that then it's important to have more regular dialogue and routine financial updates. For our standard accounts that need bonds on a more regular basis and we need the annual financial updates and personal financials and work in progress and bank forms and things like that, it's more important to communicate regularly both ways on making sure that the file is up to date. And, then as in any relationship, communication is key.

AB: Absolutely, so let's dive deeper into the financials. As a non-expert in surety bonds, I would think updated financials are probably required to be submitted at some regular interval, maybe annually. Is that enough to keep the surety informed on the financial health of the company?

AW: Again, depending on the needs, the size of the account, year-end financials might be the requirement, or it might be interim financials as well. We might need to see them quarterly, semi-annually, just depending on what the relationship is with the surety, whether they're outgrowing their earlier bonding need sizes and want to expand that capacity, then we're going to look for some additional information in that regard. Sometimes we require CPA financial statements, again, depends on the surety, depends on the size of the account. Sometimes it's just in house financial statements, but we kind of walk the clients through what type of presentation is best to maximize their level of surety support.

AB:  All right, so it's important to keep the surety informed by regularly providing pertinent financial information. And this kind of follows nicely into the second point that you made earlier, which is communication. So, why is communication with the surety so important?

AW: Well, let's just say sureties don't like surprises, like most of us don't like surprises.

AB: Right?

AW: So, sometimes maybe a client is looking to, again, get into a slightly different type of work under their typical purview or grow their job sizes or work for a new general contract or a new owner.

If people are looking into that, we'd much prefer to know ahead of time so we can kind of, again, coach them and share that with the surety early so that when it comes time for this new need to pop up, we kind of have already paved the path on how this is going to go, right? We want to grow with our clients, we want to make sure that they're successful, and so getting this kind of information just helps solidify that relationship with the surety.

AB: All right, so what are some examples of things that should be communicated?

AW: Well, as I mentioned, if you're looking to work with somebody new, if the job size is larger than you've ever looked at before, maybe it's a little more technical or complicated, and you're going to have some subcontractors that are going to perform the bulk of the work. That type of stuff is what we will want to sort of outline and share with the bonding company.

A lot of times we'll ask if it's a larger or a more complicated job. What do you like about the job? What is it that's enticed you to want to go down this new path? You know, and sometimes it's an interesting conversation and the client might not have thought of something before that we can share from past experiences and they can make their own business decision. We're not here to tell them what they should do, just share with them what we've seen work, not work, etc.

AB: Yeah, that's a good point.

So Anne, I think you made an important point earlier. If a contractor wants to build a strong and productive relationship with their surety, they need to communicate when their situation changes. Like you mentioned all of those things, whether they're expanding into a different region or a market, changing a professional relationship, maybe like a bank, or even changing or even if they have a change in their financial health as a company, whether it's good or bad, they should be communicating those things with you. And Obviously, lines of communication have to continuously be open on things like that.

So, Anne, if listeners have questions about their surety program, what is the best way to get in touch with you?

AW: I can always be reached at (619)486-6570 or email is awright@ranchomesa.com.

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

AW: 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.