"your best insurance is an insurance broker"
Dealing direct with an insurance company through an agent (like StateFarm, Geico, Allstate et al) they hold all the cards. Dealing with a broker - particularly a fairly large broker with a large "book" of insurance puts some of the cards in YOUR hand. The broker works for YOU, not the insurance company. An agent works for the insurance company - not for you. Generally speaking, this means the broker goes to bat for you carrying a BIG BAT. If the insurer gets picky or nasty and doesn't cover what they should cover, they stand a very real chance of not only losing you as a customer, but possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in premiums when the broker decides to move a sizeable percentage of their "book" to another company who is more likely to "play ball" when a client needs help.
I spend about 20 hours a week in a pretty good sized insurance brokerage where my youngest daughter is also Assistant Operations Manager, and I see that bat weilded on a pretty regular basis. If one company won't play ball, there are another 5 or six waiting in the wings for most policies. There are some risks that only one or two will cover, or be competetive on - and some companies that they only write policies with as a "last resort" because they are more difficult to deal with. - but generally if the CSR gets on the insurance company's case, things happen - and pretty quickly.
A phone call goes like "how many millions of dollars of insurance do we have with you? --- and how many claims have you had to pay out?
--- and you want to risk that kind of business by dragging this out for another month or making the insured jump through more hoops?? I didn't think so.. We will be expecting the check in the mail. You have a good day too -"
Or getting insurance for something a bit out of the ordinary for one of the "programs" - let's say well drillers. The broker calls the insurer of record and asks "can you cover -------? The insurer says "it's not something we run into every day - let me check." - and comes back with something like "What ro YOU think - what is this similar too and what kind of rating would you be comfortable with - you've got a pretty good record on this program - your loss ratios are REALLY low - how does $X per thousand sound to you"?
And the "uninsurable" has just been insured - often for far less than the customer was expecting - all because he's got the weight of a good broker (and an affinity group) on his team.
A good broker is worth his weight in gold when you need him!!!