Berkley Medical Excess Underwriters

Our Mission

Berkley Medical Excess Underwriters (BerkleyMed) seeks to be the market leader in medical malpractice excess and reinsurance coverage by providing customized risk financing alternatives and risk mitigation services that meet the unique needs of you, our healthcare clients and assist you in reducing your total cost of risk.

Company Description

BerkleyMed helps insure healthcare organizations that self insure a portion of their healthcare professional liability risk and seeks to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of that risk financing program. We manage direct excess and umbrella coverage over a trust or other self-insurance vehicle, and reinsurance to captive facilities. We bring value to our brokers and clients by collaborating on risk management, claims and financial issues.

By understanding each client’s unique situation and goals, our team is able to develop a risk financing and service strategy that aligns with that of the broker and the needs of our clients with a focus on reducing their overall total cost of risk. We currently provide a maximum capacity of $25 million in claims-made hospital professional liability limits through excess and umbrella policies, which are issued on Admiral Insurance Company paper and reinsurance certificates, which are issued on Berkley Insurance Company paper.

How BerkleyMed is Different

Understanding Your Business ObjectivesThe The BerkleyMed team includes specialists from all facets of the insurance industry, including finance, actuarial, clinical risk management, underwriting, and claims management. This multi-faceted approach enhances our ability to understand the strategic objectives of our clients and more effectively deploy our products and resources to support both the operational and risk financing objectives of our clients and brokers.

Creating Solutions for Your Unique Needs As healthcare risk specialists, we know our risk products and services must be innovative, flexible, responsive, and state-of-the-art – that’s why we go an extra step to better understand each insured’s organizational strategic objectives, risk appetite, financial position, service requirements, claims philosophy, and risk management philosophy. With this information we develop a customized risk financing program. The result is a more creative program that better satisfies the risk financing and strategic initiatives of our insureds and brokers.

Supporting You with Specialized ExpertiseWe recognize that our clients need tools to more accurately measure the cost effectiveness of aggressive risk management. We have developed the largest proprietary healthcare liability database in the industry. Utilization of this database gives our clients the ability to evaluate their own loss experience relative to the industry or a self-defined peer group.

By utilizing our customized data mining reports, hospital CEO s and CFOs can more effectively analyze the return on investment of strategic decisions to support risk management and claim initiatives. Risk and claim specialists can utilize the results to affirm best practices and effectuate specific opportunities for improvement – all with the goal of driving costs out of the system.

But our data mining capabilities go well beyond traditional benchmarking. Through complex statistical analysis, our data mining team will work closely with our clients to identify and quantify unique cost drivers within their system, through hypothesis testing, correlation analyses, and trend studies.

Focused on turning data into actionable recommendations is at the cornerstone of BerkleyMed’s data mining strategy. We believe that linking data to customized risk financing programs and targeted risk mitigation services provides our healthcare clients with the ability to take action in controlling costs within their facilities based on their unique attributes. Utilization of our data mining has saved our clients millions of dollars in their retained layer funding.

Our clients benefit from a collaborative claims philosophy and our diverse claim expertise in hospital claim management, administration, negotiation, strategy, and claim advocacy. Proactive claim management and optimal claim resolution result in lower loss costs and ultimately a lower total cost of risk.

For BerkleyMed clients, our clinical risk management consultants are available to assist with risk management, clinical, regulatory or loss prevention services. By linking risk management services to a customized risk financing program, limited resources can be directed to high risk areas that may be a drain on revenue or increase loss potential.

Preparing for What Lies AheadTo effectively collaborate and consult with you, we can’t be focused solely on the present – we must be prepared for what lies ahead within our industry. Being proactive in our risk mitigation means focusing on what currently keeps you up at night, but also identifying what may be keeping you up in the future.

Distribution

BerkleyMed products and services are distributed on a nationwide basis by independent insurance agents and brokers. We strive to meet the objectives of our distribution network by working closely with them to identify and meet their customer’s needs as they relate to their healthcare professional liability exposure.

About W. R. Berkley Corporation

W. R. Berkley Corporation, founded in 1967, is one of the nation's premier commercial lines property casualty insurance providers. Each of the operating units in the Berkley group participates in a niche market requiring specialized knowledge about a territory or product. Our competitive advantage lies in our long-term strategy of decentralized operations, allowing each of our units to identify and respond quickly and effectively to changing market conditions and local customer needs. This decentralized structure provides financial accountability and incentives to local management and enables us to attract and retain the highest caliber professionals. We have the expertise and resources to utilize our strengths in the present environment, and the flexibility to anticipate, innovate and respond to whatever opportunities and challenges the future may hold.

Contact Information

Berkley Medical Excess Underwriters, LLC
390 S. Woods Mill Road, Suite 125
St. Louis, MO 63017
Tel: (314) 523-3650
Fax: (314) 523-3685
www.berkleymed.com

Colin SUttie, FCAS
csuttie@berkleymed.com

Robbin A. Willis
rwillis@berkleymed.com

Matt Fessler
mfessler@berkleymed.com