In late 2019, leading US longshore & commercial marine MGA and Lloyd’s broker, LIG Marine, decided to update the way they did business.

As an independent broker with a team of 30 people, based in Florida, but with significant business at Lloyd’s in London, LIG needed an e-trading platform that was efficient, flexible and cost effective. They sought a tool that would give them a differentiating factor, would enable them to bind risks remotely and avoid the tedious process of scanning and sending PDF versions of contracts back and forth across the ocean repeatedly. All this and more is why they chose Whitespace.

The decision to move to e-trading via the Whitespace Platform was originally one born of necessity. However, once they began using the Platform the LIG Marine team began to see all the benefits that Whitespace can provide.

Using the Whitespace Platform opened the door for LIG to pursue its strategy for the Lloyd’s broker portion of its business and broaden it to see more open market subscription business than expected. It enabled LIG to increase its ability to communicate with Lloyd’s underwriters.

The platform offers opportunities to work on business that LIG might otherwise not have seen, as well as a way of easing the quoting, renewing and binding process for existing customers.

Mark Greenway, Chief Underwriting Officer at LIG Marine, comments:

“We started working with Whitespace pretty much from day one, and while there have been many significant updates, what hasn’t changed is how accommodating and responsive the team is. Whenever we’ve had an issue, no matter how small, they’ve always come back quickly with an answer or a workaround. The team have been hugely proactive every step of the way, even before we officially signed on the dotted line.

On one particular occasion, I would say they provided well and truly one of the best customers services I’ve had in quite some time.

The platform is responsive, quick and when we started interacting with the user interface, we realised how good it was. I was so thrilled that it was actually going to improve placement rather than just facilitate electronic trading, and it has certainly done that.

Using Whitespace has given us power and flexibility when placing our London business that we didn’t previously believe possible. Once I started to really understand the benefits of digitisation and what it meant for us, it changed my way of thinking and after that I was sold. It’s been great to work with and has proven to be a tool we truly benefit from and one that significantly improves the way we do business.”