iGO4 reached a milestone this year by breaking into the Insurance Times Top 50 Brokers list
In a motor insurance market saturated by telematics providers, iGO4 separated itself from the competition earlier this year by breaking into the Insurance Times Top 50 Brokers list.
The inclusion was significant for the market and iGO4, and marks a milestone in the rapid expansion of the broker in the last few years.
“It’s incredible to be a Top 50 broker,” said chief executive and co-founder Matt Munro. “If I look back just five years there were seven of us and we’ve now grown the business to over 300 people.”
Unlike other fast-growing traditional brokers which have added size through private-equity backed acquisitions, iGO4 has earnt its place built on collecting customer data and utilising that data.
And traditional brokers will be watching intently to discover whether other early disruptors may begin to start similarly competing for size.
But while iGO4 did win investment from Dutch group IVM in 2011 and subsequently acquired Equity Direct Broking two and a half years ago, Munro says another acquisition would be an unwanted distraction to him. He says the firm today has everything it needs already to grow and be successful.
“When you’ve got telematics data you’ve got something that other people haven’t got, and you can’t really buy that in,” Munro added.
Growth
Founded in 2007, iGO4 has two divisions – its direct-to-consumer Wise Driving telematics brand; and its partnerships arm with the major personal lines brokers and direct writers.
In recent years it has partnered with Hastings and RAC to provide their telematics products, and Munro said he was confident of in the next few months announcing another telematics brand with a direct writer.
But Munro says it is important the group maintains and strengthens its disruptive Wise Driving brand to see continued growth.
Coming from a background at BGL and working on the early stages of ComparetheMarket, Munro says he saw the direction personal lines insurance was taking, which convinced him to set up iGO4 primarily as a player picking up business through the aggregator sites.
That early foresight could arguably be seen as the key factor behind the company’s ascent into Top 50. The majority of the 200,000 iGO4 Wise Driving customers today still come through price comparison websites, and Munro said knowing that customer base allowed the company to focus investment and attention on ensuring the quote and buy journeys and portals are strong.
“What we’ve now done is made sure everything is mobile optimised and the experience they get on their mobile is strong.
“Insurtech is all about recognising the new ways that consumers want to interact, and this is something that we have done.”
Telematics
The majority of these customers are younger drivers and Munro says the key to further growth will be about taking telematics “mainstream”.
And he says key to this will be exploring the new capabilities telematics could deliver beyond pricing.
In particular, the company wants to build into the telematics offering a safety aspect.
Munro added: “For me its about how we create a services-led proposition rather than a price one.
“With young drivers today you almost need to have telematics, otherwise you’re going to be paying £400-£600 more on your car insurance.
“What I want to do is look at some of the capabilities you get through telematics and present those to different segments of the market.”
One new capability iGO4 has introduced is crash detection.
“From a safety perspective you think about the older profile of customers and to know that as soon as you have an accident it will automatically tell us, and we can do something about it,” said Munro about the feature.
“Holy Grail”
And another capability is alerting the driver to when their vehicle requires servicing.
Munro says this is a feature the company is pushing to achieve the “Holy Grail” of partnering up with a car manufacturer.
“We are having active conversations at the moment and we just need to turn that into something a bit firmer,” Munro said on the prospects of partnering with a car manufacturer.
“With telematics one of the big challenges to start with was to actually lead insurers into telematics and demonstrate to them that we can deliver to them very good loss ratios and a better customer selection.
“We’ve proved that now and are going through the same process with the motor manufacturers.”
Competing with direct writers has been a growing issue for motor brokers, but Munro says by developing a telematics-based model there are opportunities out there.
“We work with the direct writers, so we’re obviously doing something right because they’re choosing us to deliver solutions on their behalf, and we’re then going head to head with them.”
Munro sits on several broker panels and broker committees, and he said those with traditional models were increasingly getting edged out of the market by direct players. Munro said his company has not seen this, and reiterated his belief that the key to competing was by focussing on customer experience.
He said: “You create that competitive edge around how you are utilising data, and how you are delivering a better experience for the customer, because what’s really important in our market is retention,” Munro said. “That’s something we have a lot of focus on.”
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