Professional Risks trip to Porto

In insurance, the value that comes from building face to face connections has arguably never been more important. At Tokio Marine HCC we’re committed to building and maintaining relationships with our clients and brokers.

Recently, our Professional Risks team took a small group of their key broking partners on a trip to Porto, Portugal. In this short blog we hear from Underwriter, Alex Clarke on what the team got up to on their travels.

Julia McCarthy, Louise Grima, Georgia Hayes and I were joined by nine brokers to take in the best that Porto has to offer in amongst some great business development conversations.

Day 1
The trip kicked off with a food and walking tour with a company called Eating Europe, who guide visitors down the less well trodden paths of Europe’s cities to explore all their culinary richness and local customs. It was an interesting experience and topped off with a fantastic dinner, providing the perfect start to the trip.

Day 2
The next day, the group headed by train to the Douro Valley to visit the Moscatel wine and Favaios bread museum, which was followed by lunch and Port tasting, the local wine that takes its name from the city, at Quinta da Avessada. From there, we took a boat trip through the valley and finished off the trip with dinner at the World of Wine back in Porto city centre. 

It was a very busy few days, but the mix of business and pleasure was the perfect way to cement old relationships and build new ones. The feedback from our brokers has been hugely positive as it’s often only in these more relaxed settings, away from the pressure of day to day trading, that brokers and underwriters really get to know each other, understand what drives the other and how best to deliver on each other’s requirements.

Our broker partners are a key element in our ability to protect customers and these touch points are the building blocks of great relationships and the foundations are vital to our ongoing success.