Vanbridge Introduces RepsExpress

Vanbridge has been appointed by Concord Specialty to assist in the underwriting of representation and warranty insurance for middle market transactions.

This capability is key to making this product available to the middle market. Over the past several years, Representations and Warranties insurance has seen tremendous growth and the trend continues today. Numerous private equity firms are now repeat buyers of the product as M&A counsel grow increasingly comfortable with accepting the insurance as a viable substitute for traditional indemnities. In response, the insurance marketplace, including the brokerage community and insurers who play in this space, continue to hire and add to their capabilities to handle the growing deal flow.

Nevertheless, a significant subset of transactions continues to face difficulty in obtaining coverage–specifically, those small to middle market transactions seeking less than $10MM in limits. Because the underwriting process is the same regardless of transaction size, coupled with abundant deal flow, markets necessarily choose to work on larger transactions that result in larger premium dollars.

Vanbridge, dedicated to structuring insurance solutions for the private equity, venture capital and asset management community, worked with Concord to develop an effective insurance solution to address the need for these lower limit R&W programs.

The insurance policy will be underwritten by Concord, a longstanding and respected Managing General Underwriter in the transactional risk space. Vanbridge and Concord created a streamlined underwriting process that allows them to properly and efficiently underwrite these risks. The preliminary step consists of an “up-front” review conducted by Vanbridge. This initial vetting is intended to assess the viability of insurance early on in the transaction to give the parties comfort that the insurance will be available for their deal. The program will offer state of the art coverage using a pre-negotiated form, shorter underwriting timelines and competitive pricing and fees. Although Vanbridge is assisting in the preliminary review process, we represent the insured at all times.