Insurance Times Etrading Q&A: David Martin director of SME markets and corporate partnerships at Allianz

Allianz performed very well in the etrading survey, particularly in ease of navigation. What has been done for brokers to rate Allianz in this way?

SME business models are not just about digital platforms, the success lies in how you take a customer right the way through the journey. We have managed to integrate our people, systems, and underwriting arms making that differentiated approach real to our customers.

In the Insurance Times etrading survey brokers are not only rating QuoteSME as a platform but our end to end business model. We have completed a great deal of work to optimise our model with individual brokers and underwriters. You have got an intuitive platform that fits both sides of the equation.

If a broker puts a quote on QuoteSME I know it’s there immediately, that’s a real differentiation for our service.

Some brokers felt the more complicated the risk, the likelihood they will have to speak to an underwriter. How do you create a portal that reduces the complexities of risk capture?

We have a couple of facets in play, we introduced average free live, using data to inform brokers at the point of input, using robotics automation we get data at source, so we have already collected the sum insured, turnovers, wage, roles etc and are always sense checking using our own data to try and simplify the journey at the front.

My job is to give customers peace of mind so they know if they insure with Allianz your claim gets paid; so using data to give greater certainty is vital, and that’s what we believe in. If I can source information more accurately than someone else that gives a customer advantage and makes the customer journey slicker.

There’s a whole load of questions I don’t need to ask anymore because I source the information from somewhere else, I still know the answer I just know the answer from a different place. Increasingly you will start seeing us doing this more and more, average free is our first move, you will see us move around business interruption, using robotics to source trade codes and zip codes. We are beginning to sense check many things behind the scenes and starting to use algorithms to give us an indication of what a survey score outcome could be without sending a surveyor out.

I agree that the more complex something because the likelihood increases that you want to speak to somebody, in our system there’s also live chat, telephone and even fax!

A new area in this year’s survey was investigating the user journey whilst acquiring products through a software house platform, could you speak about the process Allianz go through when placing products on a software house?

As a Director of Polaris I make sure we work to Polaris standards. The Polaris standard enables us to connect in ways with a software house using the same routines. We have deployed our rates across all software houses through that mechanism, which gives a much better and cleaner journey as far as the broker is concerned. The question mapping is always a challenge for us and we are working with Polaris on good customer outcomes where we are looking at further improvements to this journey.

Out of the 743 brokers that took part in this year’s Insurance Times etrading survey, almost 40% said that they must wait up to a day for a referral to be cleared. What efforts are being made to speed up referrals?

Well we clear all referral immediately where we have the information to do so, we call that ‘zero carry forward’ and try to ensure we have no work outstanding at the end of the day. We work with a dialler system, so if it goes into referral the call drops into the dialler automatically, the dialler will call you back and the underwriter with authority will always be on the phone. Our live chat service responds within seconds, ensuring we are not letting our brokers down.

This is reflected in our excellent position in the survey; the reality is alignment across the entire model is vital to success.

Brokers in the survey commented on various insurer question sets, with various comments stating questions can be too long, too short or even irrelevant. How do you find that right balance in asking the right questions to brokers?

My job is to make sure we have a sustainable proposition therefore I need to ask questions to assess the risk posed. Increasingly I am using data enrichment as previously discussed and source information ourselves to sense check that the answer on our system is correct. We also look at application fraud, so we can see people using the system changing trades etc. safeguarding the contract certainty piece. When we give average free products, we must make sure our exposures are correctly recorded and the clever use of databases helps ensure that.

I would argue that we are very careful to only include relevant questions. There will be some questions that we add and end up removing when data shows they are not indicative of risk. Others we add are indicative and having collected the data we automate further the service we can provide. My job is to be the most sophisticated underwriter in the UK, digital platforms are one thing, but it is vital we remain relevant and sustainable particularly in our pricing techniques, there’s no point using the digital platform without collecting granular data to ensure constant improvement.

The data enrichment feed alone will give us 500 different sets of financial data. That’s data that no one else has got and probably the insured don’t even know about. So now we are looking at datasets in a whole new different way.

Is there anything you would like to tell brokers to watch out for on the platform?

Clearly, we are trying to expand the platform to make sure more brokers can take advantage of the service we offer. We are planning the LV= migration where we are building the taxi and truck products and also changes to extend our hospitality trades and will be ready to roll that out in Q3. We are trying to create the widest possible offering in an immediacy model featuring defacto 5 star products. We are the only ones in that space - so that’s the reality.

We found broker frustration to be present when they have an urgent query or problem, sometimes losing complete faith in the insurer. How do you try to match these expectations?

This is the most important point, 80% of my staff CII qualified so when you pick up the phone to Allianz you speak to an underwriter. That’s how you deal with your immediacy issue by training your staff properly, so our people go through over 9 weeks training before they are even allowed to pick up the phone. So, when you speak to an underwriter you can speak to someone who can make decisions and if it’s not in their authority they have got their Bluetooth headset on and the underwriter walking the floor can clear it for them.

The Insurance Times Etrading report is out now to order:

• Discover how over 740 brokers view each stage of etrading on the leading insurer platforms and software houses in UKGI.
• Gain valuable insight into product demand, barriers and support brokers desire to trade more policies.
• Discover how brokers rate their chosen route of trading in areas such as security, navigation, products, referrals and more!
• Learn what brokers really need from insurers and software houses to compete in an evolving industry.
• Determine your strategic plan by learning from brokers feedback in 10 key etrading subject areas.

Register your interest here - https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/EtradeInfo

or alternatively contact Jack Thomson on 0207-618-3433 or at jack.thomson@insurancetimes.co.uk