Carriers
Brown & Riding builds out agribusiness with new national practice
By Insurance Wire Staff, . Insurance Wire.
Brown & Riding has opened a national agribusiness practice aimed at retail agents placing coverage for clients across the agricultural supply chain, according to reporting by Coverager, Insurance Journal and Business Insurance.
Business Insurance identified David Chipp, a senior vice president based in Los Angeles, as the practice leader. Insurance Journal added that Chipp is backed by a team of product line specialists with technical expertise and market access.
The scope of the practice is broad. Coverager listed the target segments as custom farming and dairy operations, mills handling seed and grain, producers of meat and poultry, facilities for processing and storage, businesses supplying agricultural equipment, applicators of chemicals and operators in agricultural transport. Insurance Journal extended that list to include nuts and other farm operations, as well as premises carrying public and liquor exposures. Business Insurance confirmed the unit will broker lines spanning property, casualty, plus management and professional liability.
On the risk side, Coverager reported the team will address exposures spanning breakdown of equipment, severe weather, recalls of product, supply-chain disruption and cyber incidents.
All three outlets described the practice as national in scope, and all three agreed on Chipp's leadership role. None of the reports named specific carrier relationships, disclosed premium targets or provided staffing numbers beyond the reference to a supporting specialist team.
The move reflects a broader pattern among wholesale brokers of formalising specialty practices rather than handling niche risks through generalist desks. Agribusiness sits at the intersection of several hard-to-place exposure categories: weather-driven property risk, food safety and product recall liability, equipment-dependent operations and, increasingly, cyber risk tied to precision agriculture technology. Bundling those into a single practice with dedicated market access is a straightforward value proposition for retail agents who lack the volume to build those carrier relationships themselves.
What the reporting does not establish is whether Brown & Riding is entering a market it previously served informally, or whether this represents a genuinely new appetite for the firm. The distinction matters for retail agents deciding whether to test the practice with a submission: an established book behind a new brand carries different risk than a team building from scratch.
Retail agents with agricultural accounts, particularly those writing food processing, agri-transport or chemical application risks, should note the new access point. Underwriters in those lines will be watching whether the practice generates meaningful submission flow.
Source: https://coverager.com/brown-riding-launches-agribusiness-practice/
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