Q&A: Hiscox on the art of crafting a scheme

1. What are some key considerations when putting together a broker scheme? 

Crafting a scheme is an art – and there are some key elements necessary to ensure that your scheme continues to achieve its full potential. 

One of those core elements is ensuring the proposition is truly relevant for your target audience.

No surprises here, but in some parts of our industry the market is moving and changing very quickly, driven by external factors – identifying these shifts and responding appropriately is a skill that is demonstrated by schemes specialists in being close to their chosen industry, but more importantly in being able to understand the impact of changes and respond accordingly. 

2. How important is it to make schemes easy to interact with for brokers? 

It’s essential that brokers are able to easily understand and interact with our schemes – our proposition is based around alignment with our brokers, supporting their customers with a true partnership that has a focus on simplicity. 

This helps our brokers to reach those customers and provides a proposition that does not operate solely for the needs of today, but grows intelligently alongside our broker partners to offer added value and choice alongside a modular and flexible solution. 

We purposely craft a proposition that is designed as a one-stop solution, offering simplicity and avoiding layers of minimum premiums that can exist in the market.

3. Do you have an example of the benefit of this thinking in schemes?

Health and wellbeing is one of the core sectors where we are seeing changes and the need for flexible solutions. 

It’s a broad area, but involves us performing multiple activities for our customers as they respond to market activity and trends – many clients led with medical malpractice cover and then build a package of extras around this. 

The health and wellbeing sector can include a wide range of customers, from those offering treatments in the hair and beauty industry to those offering holistic therapies such as reflexology and reiki and even talking therapies and fitness. We ensure that we tailor cover to each form of business and retain a wealth of experience in specific areas, such as dental and aesthetics. 

This sector shows the power of taking the right approach and, within Hiscox, has seen large growth opportunities for our schemes offering. In total, 70% of our premiums from this line now come via schemes alone.  

4. What does supporting your insureds look like in practice via this scheme?

In one recent case, one of our insured beauticians was subjected to a vexatious campaign by a customer who was dissatisfied with an acrylic nail treatment performed ahead of their wedding.

Policies aren’t normally triggered by complaints, but our team stepped in early to try and mitigate the potential for a claim. The insured’s various social media platforms were flooded with unjustified criticism and demands for reimbursement over and above the fee charged. 

Our team helped the insured manage correspondence, involving a significant amount of draft amendment and ghost writing. Eventually the complainant was given a deadline of seven days to accept a goodwill offer of reimbursement, which was accepted with the proviso of the comments being deleted – meaning the medical malpractice complaint never progressing into a claim. 

5. How are you supporting brokers to trade this type of business? 

In evolving our proposition, it is vital that we offer our brokers and their customers a simple way to transact this type of business effectively. 

We have seen benefits for brokers in having flexible solutions under one policy and renewal date that aids efficiency for them.

And, as part of our ongoing digital development, we have invested in a digital solution for brokers to place this business with us and our first into eTrade world for health, beauty and wellbeing has been fantastically received. 

Being able to create a core product with access to the covers our customer needs while being able to personalise them is exciting.

• To find out more about health and wellbeing risks, click here