In the middle market commercial insurance space, the role of the producer has never been more critical—or more misunderstood. Too many producers still view their job as selling policies instead of what it truly is: protecting the assets and livelihoods of the businesses they serve.
This mindset shift is especially urgent when it comes to cyber insurance and professional liability coverage. These coverages are often overlooked or under-offered, yet they represent some of the biggest exposures your clients face today. If you’re not consistently bringing them up, you’re not only failing your clients—you’re exposing yourself to significant errors and omissions (E&O) risk.
In a recent conversation with Zane Goldthorpe of ProWriters, we broke down why producers must make cyber and professional liability front-and-center, how the current soft market presents a unique window of opportunity, and why failing to act now will cost both you and your clients down the road.
When most producers hear “ProWriters,” they immediately think cyber insurance. And while cyber is foundational, it’s just the beginning. ProWriters and other modern wholesalers have evolved to provide full-scale professional liability solutions across multiple lines:
With access to 50–60 markets, wholesalers like ProWriters can handle everything from clean submissions to the most complex risks. That’s a game-changer for producers in the middle market, where clients rarely fit neatly into “cookie cutter” profiles.
The message here is clear: don’t limit your thinking to cyber alone. When you open the professional liability conversation, you unlock a full suite of solutions that clients need but often don’t know how to ask for.
One of the biggest frustrations for producers is inefficiency in the submission process. That’s where tech-enabled wholesale platforms step in.
Think of modern wholesale platforms as the “Expedia of Cyber Insurance.” You can submit straightforward business and quickly generate competitive quotes—while still having human experts available for complex accounts.
The problem with many tech-only platforms is they leave producers stranded. If a submission is tricky, has claims, or doesn’t fit the underwriting appetite, you’re often met with nothing but declinations. Worse, you may end up blocking markets without getting quotes, leaving you and your client stuck.
Hybrid platforms, by contrast, combine efficiency for clean risks with hands-on brokerage expertise for complex ones. That blend of speed and support is exactly what producers need to win in today’s competitive environment.
Here’s the truth most producers don’t want to hear: if you see yourself as just a seller of insurance policies, you’re already behind.
Your real job is to protect client assets and livelihoods. That requires not only understanding risk but also having the courage to talk about uncomfortable exposures like cyber, EPLI, or flood—coverages many clients don’t initially want to buy.
This is where the duty to offer coverage comes into play. As producers, we are legally and ethically obligated to present prudent and reasonable coverages to every client. If a client later suffers a cyber loss and says, “My agent never even mentioned this to me,” you’re not only facing a damaged relationship—you could be facing an E&O claim.
The fix is simple: document your offers. Use coverage rejection forms when clients decline. But don’t skip the conversation. The duty to offer is your shield against liability and your pathway to deeper client trust.
If you’ve been waiting to push cyber, stop waiting. The cyber market is still relatively soft—but it won’t stay that way forever.
Right now:
In a hard market, all of that goes away. Carriers will cherry-pick only the best risks, premiums will skyrocket, and clients without perfect controls will struggle to even get a quote.
That’s why your goal should be to get clients into cyber policies now. Once they’re in, renewals are far easier than trying to write brand-new business in a hardened market.
Many producers hesitate to bring up cyber when clients are already frustrated by rising premiums in other lines like auto, umbrella, or GL. But that’s exactly the wrong time to retreat.
Here’s how to frame it:
Clients don’t want another bill—they want peace of mind. When you speak their language and connect coverage to their real-world operations, resistance turns into understanding.
Over my career, I’ve identified five coverages that consistently represent massive gaps in middle market accounts. I call them the Five Horsemen of Missed Opportunity:
If you were given access to any agency’s commercial book and did nothing but check for these five coverages, you’d generate revenue for years without ever making another cold call.
Even more importantly, you’d protect your clients from exposures that could cripple their businesses—or wipe out their personal finances.
Insurance is critical, but it’s not the only answer. A true advisor helps clients implement risk management protocols that prevent claims in the first place.
For cyber, that means talking about:
Not only do these tools make clients more insurable, but they also reduce the likelihood of losses. And when claims do happen, carriers look far more favorably on insureds who can demonstrate strong risk management practices.
As producers, we should also leverage resources like ProWriters University, which provides training modules for agents and educational content for clients. The more we educate, the stronger our position as trusted advisors becomes.
Cyber and professional liability coverage aren’t “nice-to-haves.” They are mission-critical components of any risk management program.
If you fail to bring them up, you’re not just leaving money on the table—you’re leaving your clients vulnerable and your own reputation at risk.
So here’s the challenge:
At the end of the day, your clients aren’t paying you to sell policies. They’re paying you to protect their businesses, their people, and their futures. And that starts with making sure cyber and professional liability are always part of the conversation.
In the middle market commercial insurance space, the role of the producer has never been more critical—or more misunderstood. Too many producers still view their job as selling policies instead of what it truly is: protecting the assets and livelihoods of the businesses they serve.
The middle market rewards depth, not breadth. Yet many producers still approach it like a volume game, quoting everything that moves, chasing price, and hoping activity turns into production. From the outside, it looks like hustle. From the inside of the underwriting and wholesale world, it looks like noise.
Personal lines has quietly become one of the most competitive segments in the insurance industry. Agencies that once dominated their local markets are now fighting to differentiate themselves against direct writers, digital-first carriers, and large brokers with massive content machines.
The cyber insurance market has always been unpredictable. Over the past decade, we’ve seen it move from an emerging line of coverage to one of the most volatile, swinging rapidly between soft and hard market cycles. But today, cyber has entered one of the softest markets in recent memory—and that presents a rare opportunity for both agents and clients.
For most of my 20-year career, captives felt like something reserved for the insurance elite—the jumbo accounts, the Fortune-level operations, the companies with multimillion-dollar manual premiums and entire departments dedicated to risk management. If you had asked me ten or fifteen years ago whether a $250,000 account was a legitimate captive candidate, I would’ve laughed. I thought captives were reserved for companies so complex and so large that the only rational way to insure them was to build an insurance company around their risk.
Breaking into the commercial insurance industry is never easy—especially when you’re young, new, and entering a hard market where expectations are high and patience is low. But every once in a while, a story comes along that perfectly illustrates what it really takes to survive and succeed as a new producer.
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