What revenue range do you typically serve?

Most middle-market commercial engagements are with closely-held businesses in the $25M to $250M revenue range. Smaller firms are typically served by lower-touch agencies; larger firms by national brokerages with dedicated risk-management staff.

Do you handle multi-state programs?

Yes. The firm's principals are licensed across Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, Florida, and California, and we coordinate placements in all fifty states through our carrier appointments.

How are renewal marketings handled?

Each renewal includes a formal marketing review beginning approximately 120 days before the renewal date. We prepare the submission, select the markets, present the result to the client, and negotiate any material changes in coverage or pricing.

Do you do loss-control work in-house?

Patricia Devanney and David Erskine handle loss-control reviews for clients with significant workers-compensation or property exposure. For specialized engineering (boiler-and-machinery, sprinkler-systems, fire-protection), we coordinate with carrier loss-control engineers.

What's a typical engagement length?

Most middle-market commercial relationships run multiple decades. The firm has clients whose programs we have written continuously since the 1970s — through ownership transitions, business-line expansions, and changes in management.

Middle-Market Property & Casualty — Ashford Whitcombe & Partners

Most of the firm's commercial book sits in the middle-market P&C sub-practice — closely-held businesses with revenues between twenty-five and two hundred and fifty million, two-to-twenty operating locations, and integrated insurance programs running across six to a dozen lines of business.

The work is led from Greenwich by Patricia Devanney, CIC, ARM, with support from David Erskine on workers-compensation specifically and Jamie Holcombe on the executive-risk lines that almost always accompany a substantive middle-market program. Most of these relationships are multi-decade — several active clients have been with the firm since Theodore Whitcombe Sr.'s era.

We work as risk advisors first. The conversation begins with the operations of the business, the contracts it signs, the workforce it employs, and the exposures the principals carry personally as officers and directors. The placement follows from the conversation.

What we typically write for middle-market clients

Commercial Property: Building, contents, equipment, business-income (with indemnity periods structured to the actual time-to-restore for the business's most critical operations), inland marine for valuable in-transit property, and builders' risk for clients under construction.
General Liability + Excess Towers: Primary GL with excess towers to $25M+ for clients whose contractual liability, product-liability profile, or premises-and-operations exposure warrants it. Coordinated with the personal umbrella carried by the principals.
Workers Compensation: Multi-state programs including monopolistic-state coordination, retrospective-rated and deductible programs for clients with mature loss-history, and proactive loss-control coordination with carrier engineering.
Commercial Auto / Fleet: From single-vehicle to multi-hundred-vehicle fleets. Composite-rated, retro, and deductible programs available. Hired-and-non-owned coverage coordinated when employees use personal vehicles for business.
Cyber Liability: First-party and third-party cyber, including ransomware, business-interruption from cyber events, regulatory defense, and PCI-fine assessment. Coordinated with the firm's IT-environment intake.
Crime / Fidelity: Employee dishonesty, social-engineering loss, computer-and-funds-transfer fraud. Increasingly the highest-frequency commercial claim in the firm's book.
Inland Marine + Equipment Floaters: For contractors, equipment-intensive operations, and businesses with significant in-transit property exposure. Coordinated with the commercial property program.
Surety: Performance, payment, license-and-permit, and fiduciary bonds. Capacity is relationship-driven; we coordinate with the client's CPA on aggregate-capacity allocation.

Most middle-market programs we acquire from other agencies have at least one underwriting characteristic that no longer reflects the business — outgrown limits, inadequate business-interruption indemnity periods, or general-liability aggregates that haven't kept pace with the firm's exposure.

Carriers we use for middle-market P&C

Travelers

Our longest commercial appointment (1942). Multi-line middle-market P&C, commercial auto, surety, and workers compensation across the Northeast.

The Hartford

Appointed 1958. Middle-market P&C with strong appetite for service-business and professional-firm risks; coordinates well with their small-group benefits programs.

Cincinnati Insurance

Diamond Agency since 1976. The firm's most-used middle-market carrier — particularly for contractor, real-estate, and manufacturing clients in the $25M-$100M revenue range.

Westfield Specialty

Appointed 2014. Construction (general and trade contractors), commercial real-estate owners, and middle-market property programs.

Chubb Commercial

Cornerstone Agency since 1991. Larger middle-market property, D&O, and the specialty placements that exceed Cincinnati or Hartford appetite.

Property and casualty programs for closely-held businesses.