Lee Turner, national schemes sales manager at Hiscox UK, talks to Insurance Times about the insurer’s plans for the schemes sector
1. What is the strategic importance of broker schemes to Hiscox?
The market is absolutely buoyant for schemes opportunities and our schemes team have seen more enquires than in any other period.
A combination of market factors have led to this, with underwriting and delegated authority strategies changing, increasing thresholds and even some complete changes in direction.
Customers are driving personalisation and simplicity in insurance and Hiscox has continued to push hard on both of these to make schemes a core part of our UK broker strategy, which now makes up around 25% of our broker business.
We have a strong desire to achieve double digit growth in schemes for 2024.
2. How does Hiscox support brokers throughout the operation of a scheme?
Supporting brokers all starts with our schemes account managers spending quality time with them to build a relationship and understand their story – their clients, risk profile, acquisition and retention model, pain points and growth aspirations.
Together, we then look at whether we can offer the best solution to make the scheme fly!
Lots of pieces of the jigsaw come together from conversation – to delivery and beyond. Our 40 plus strong team of dedicated schemes experts come to the fore in these conversations with their specialist sector underwriting, operational, marketing and digital skills – to name but a few.
Working in partnership with brokers to drive the best out of the opportunity, our established marketing service can also offer a full marketing audit of their business and offer advice from hints and tips all the way to a full strategic plan and campaign.
This has proved to be very popular with brokers in the ever more complex world of digital marketing and increasing expectations of clients.
3. What underwriting specialism can Hiscox leverage when supporting specialist schemes?
We focus on the following sectors and have a deep, specialist understanding of them – health, beauty and wellbeing, professions, sport, real estate, media and entertainment, property and tech and media.
Our consumer schemes focus on specialist kit and equipment, collections and collectables and hobbies.
The dedicated schemes team are able to draw on years of experience for particular sectors and all aspects of the value chain in partnership with brokers to make sure every aspect of the scheme offering meets clients’ needs and delivers a profitable return on investment
4. How important are broker relationships to the proper running of a scheme?
Relationships are paramount to the success of a scheme!
Our ability to build strong partnerships is something we take a lot of pride in – really understanding the ins and outs of what excites brokers, their passions, their lives and their stories.
It is what makes Hiscox stand out from our competitors. Time up front spent getting that granular detail on the business then builds good foundations for the business to grow from.
We jointly celebrate success and are also honest when the business is not quite going to plan and we have to change course – it takes strong relationships to be able to have those conversations and I’d like to think we have that across our schemes portfolio.
5. What is the appetite for new schemes expansion at Hiscox?
Our ambition to become stronger and grow further into existing sectors is part of our strategic focus on schemes at Hiscox.
This involves a combination of working with the right brokers, who currently have a scheme elsewhere that is not achieving its full potential, and the drive through our schemes account managers and our capabilities as a schemes team to ensure we maximise the potential of our existing schemes book of business.
