CDL growth continues as turnover surpasses £50m

Software house, CDL has announced an increase in annual turnover and pre-tax profit for the year ending 30 September 2017.

Annual turnover surpassed the £50m mark at £52.6m, an 11% increase from the £47.2m reported for the year before.

Pre-tax profits were also up, in 2017, at £8.3m. In 2016, pre-tax profit stood at £7.4m.

Growth

CDL cites the launch of its insurtech incubator as a factor contributing to its growth.

Most recently, this led to the launch of the company’s ‘proactive insurance’ concept, which re-envisages the way individuals buy and manage their portfolio of insurance products through the Chorus mobile platform.

CDL Commercial Director, Nigel Phillips, said: ”I think the growth is primarily down to the strategy of investment. Historically that investment is both in terms of the innovation activity that we have with our incubator and the products we generate, but also in the infrastructure of the operation as well from investing in colleagues, but also in terms of the area we operate in.”

2017 also saw CDL complete and open its ServiceWorks, a technology campus in Manchester which houses its customer service teams. 

Phillips continued: ”Investment is quite significant and what our goal is to make sure we build an operation that’s fit for the future and fit to take advantage of changes in consumer behaviour.”

“Growth is organic from our existing customers, but we’ve also been quite excited to work with a number of start-ups in the broker space and helping those operations get off the ground quickly to be able to deploy those products.

“It’s a mix, but our focus is on making sure our systems are market leading and innovative. Those foundations are proving to be beneficial for CDL.”

Speaking on the results, Phillips said: “These strong financial results are evidence that our strategy of investing for the future is working. This has been seen in continued demand for our insurer and retailer solutions, together with growing interest in new services and InsurTech propositions. Continuing with this strategy will ensure sustainable future growth as we forge ahead to increase our share of the insurance retail market.”

Looking ahead

Looking ahead to future investment and activity, Phillips teased another pivotal year in CDL’s growth.

He said: ”What we do works effectively and we are looking to deploy new products and initiatives out to the market, such as the proactive insurance called Chorus. That is going to be quite transformational in the way our customers can engage with consumers to get them the products they actually want. So, this is quite an exciting time at CDL in bringing those new initiatives to market.

”Looking ahead we are ploughing on working with machine learning products and our voice technology. Those are the two other focus points we have at the moment.”