Category: Insurance

All about insurance

Aviva blames software houses for too-high premiums.

Aviva has launched its own internal extranet for brokers to get cheaper prices by ‘removing software house costs’.

Well, good luck to them – nothing wrong with that. Apart from they now need their own developers to maintain it.

But, the underlying issue is software house costs should be miniscule. If they are not then YOUR’E USING THE WRONG SOFTWARE!

If brokers want the cheaper rates but still through a software house, then you just need to look at alternative software houses! There are other providers outside of the big three who monopolise the market currently that offer the same, if not better services, at a fraction of the cost – we’re talking pin numbers rather than telephone numbers. Insurers and brokers just need to look beyond their own back door for alternative ways of being competitive whilst still giving brokers, and customers, what they want.

Let’s look at personal lines – home, van and motor for example. Let’s assume a typical broker places 2000 polices a month. ‘Pin number’ software providers might add something like £1 to the cost of a policy. If £1 is going to make a difference to how much business you write, there’s something else wrong. Suppose you write 10% more business, then the cost falls to about 80p. You pay your card providers more than that.

 

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Computer says no….

 

Earlier this week, BIBA released the results of a survey whose headline was ‘Nearly 40% say the sector has not embraced innovation and 44% of brokers also don’t believe software houses have done enough to innovate.‘ (https://www.insuranceage.co.uk/broker/3287566/biba-insurtech-survey-reveals-market-split-over-embracing-innovation)

Really? well, that might be true of a lot of software houses, but its certainly not true of SchemeServe!

BIBA’s research is baffling on the one hand and not surprising in the least on the other hand. It is incredibly frustrating to hear that nearly half of BIBA brokers don’t think software houses embrace innovation when this is at the core of what we do. We innovate every day. Is the issue here that sadly 80% of the broker market is in the hands of just a few large software houses that have become staid and don’t innovate as they should do? Perhaps brokers shouldn’t follow the pack – take a look at what else is on offer – you’d be amazed. Online quote and buy systems for new products and schemes delivered in just 15 days and for under £2k? That’s innovation that’s happening right now.

BIBA’s research says the barriers to embracing more Insurtech are mainly cost of implementation (77%). At £2k a month – really? By embracing cloud based quote and buy solutions for its commercial and schemes business, one of our broker clients has grown its business from £3m to £20m, with 30% year on year growth for the last two years. They’ve stripped out 60-70% of the manual elements of transacting business with brokers and reduced headcount by over 50% in order to generate in excess of £250,000 savings in the last year and show an 85% retention rate in its broker and insurer base.

The research also says that 39% of brokers believe lack of awareness of the options were a barrier to greater take up of technology. Surely this is the main issue as I see it. As software providers we clearly need to do more to make brokers aware of the great things we’re doing and help them to cash in on the cost savings and efficiencies on offer from Insurtech solutions; but realising the benefits of innovation is a two way process and brokers need to be prepared to take a look at new ways of doing things.

 

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