In 2017, NU forged an alliance with the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA) and Flaspöhler | NMG to conduct the inaugural Independent Agent Study — a research project designed to annually take the pulse of independent Property & Casualty insurance agents throughout the U.S. and provide revealing insight into the demographics, books of business and challenges they face, and reveal their most highly rated carrier partners.

Today, we look at the findings around how respondents rate their level of satisfaction with their commercial P&C carrier partners, and the various criteria by which producers perceive the quality of those commercial carriers.

When asked what indications of quality they value most in a commercial P&C carrier, 64.3% of our study respondents said "ease of doing business," which was the No. 1 response. That was followed by "fair, timely claims handling" (46.1%) and "strong, knowledgeable underwriting" (38.7%) "superior customer service" (37.4%) and "consistent underwriting" (36.5%).