Miho Klaić: Investment Insurance Broker Services Are the Future

The role of brokers in insurance is still relatively unknown to the general public. It is a service of comprehensive insurance solutions primarily utilized by companies, including some of the largest in the world. To discuss what this business looks like, we spoke with Miho Klaić, CEO of Fortius Inter Partes, the leading domestic company in this sector. Miho Klaić entered the insurance business in 1996, after finishing his sports career. Over the years, he has gone through all corporate levels in an insurance company, from the initial stages to being a member of the Management Board for sales and marketing.

In that position, he began collaborating with foreign insurance brokers, at a time when this service was not known or available in Croatia. After founding Fortius in 2003 and assembling a small team of collaborators, by 2006 he secured a contract with one of the largest global brokers, marking the beginning of a more serious entry into the insurance brokerage scene. Following clients, they entered the neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina market in 2008, and in 2010 they digitized their operations. This gave them an advantage over the competition, which became particularly evident after the coronavirus pandemic.

Fortius expanded into the Slovenian market in 2014, and in 2017 acquired the Pula-based company Inter Partes. The need for stronger strategic connections was realized in 2021 with their entry into the Gallagher Renomia Group, which employs sixty thousand people and had a premium income of 76 billion dollars last year. The current team consists of about forty people, including engineers, lawyers, and court experts. Since 2018, Fortius Inter Partes has been the market leader in terms of revenue and number of employees.

What can Fortius Inter Partes offer clients who need the best insurance solution?

– Our team is multidisciplinary, composed of individuals who understand our clients’ industries. We provide additional value to clients by analyzing risks and optimizing coverage according to their needs and requirements. In the event of a claim, we take over the entire process of handling it up to the final stage, the payment of compensation. Our employees are available to clients at any time of the day, as we demonstrated after the Zagreb earthquake in 2020. Within just a few hours, we contacted all clients and offered them assistance. We bring value to clients through our knowledge, operational support, and partnership collaboration to optimize protection and reduce costs.

Are you specialized in specific sectors?

– Our employees are specialized in many types of insurance, such as property insurance, construction insurance, liability insurance, or cyber insurance. We have clients from a range of different industries and offer them insurance tailored to their specific requirements and needs.

From a client’s perspective, what criteria should guide the selection of an insurance broker?

– Choosing an insurance broker is an important decision as the broker influences the level of protection, insurance costs, and the speed of claims resolution. Key criteria from the client’s perspective include the broker’s independence, international and local market presence, expertise and experience, understanding of the client’s industry, risk analysis capability, quality of advice, claims management, customer support, including digital solutions, contractual and financial guarantees, as well as transparency and business ethics. Only a small number of the hundred brokers currently registered in Croatia also offer consulting services. One of them is Fortius Inter Partes. Choosing a quality broker is an investment in security, but also in the future.

How has risk management changed today when, for example, due to climate change, historical data on weather-related disasters is no longer valid?

– That is the right question. Insurers use databases that date back up to five hundred years, and it is possible to identify areas exposed to certain risks such as earthquakes, floods, storms, and droughts. Due to climate change, we also face new challenges. In places where there were previously no storms or floods, these events are now occurring. Insurers base their pricing on old databases, so they are now making extraordinary efforts to update these databases. Everyone in the industry, including brokers, is working on this because we see how important it is to provide clients with coverage against catastrophic damages.