SafetyCulture’s head of partnerships on winning Technology Partner of the Year - Underwriting

Congratulations on winning your award for Technology Partner of the Year - Underwriting. How does it feel to win?

Thrilled, of course! This is the culmination of two years of working collaboratively with QBE to build iAuditor into a meaningful value-added offering for QBE customers in the UK. As a company, we simply built an app that workers in companies love using and over time it became clear how complementary our tool is to a commercial insurance proposition.

Fortunately, we are now used by over 25,000 companies to manage safety and quality and the benefits to those companies align well with the interests of their insurers - which was the basis of our partnership. 

The worlds of high growth tech companies and large corporate insurers don’t always work well together but in this case, both parties were focused on raising the bar together and the results speak for themselves. 

Can you give an overview of the initiative that was the basis of your entry?

iAuditor is a globally deployed mobile inspections platform that offers real-time visibility of inspection data of any kind across multiple locations. Our customers report a reduction in safety incidents post-deployment of iAuditor with an average reported reduction in incidents of 23%.

This was the catalyst for the relationship with QBE which saw the benefits they and their customers could achieve by utilising iAuditor.

When customers opt to share inspection data with QBE, it has been taken into account by underwriters when assessing risk and premium pricing.

As iAuditor is so customisable, it can be applied to any industry and this horizontal applicability has been key in building use cases with a broad range of QBE customers including manufacturers, construction companies, retailers, transportation, hospitality and many others. 

You had some very strong competition in your category, with L Marks and Mandon Software also nominated.What do you think set your initiative apart from theirs?

There were some great companies in our category. One of the strongest elements of iAuditor is the ability for companies and workers to quickly and cheaply utilise our app and start making a positive, practical impact on risk at the frontline, very quickly.

Within a couple of weeks, customers gain a level of visibility typically not available to them, in particular in multi-site business as the iAuditor web platform allows them to see what’s working and what’s not working across every location.

When we look beyond the first couple of months of iAuditor use, our customers are reporting much broader impacts including successfully defending vexatious claims; reduction in total recorded incident rate, in one instance from 1.40 to 0.71; reduction in oil tank rollover from forty per year to just one, and many other outcomes including significant efficiency drivers. 

What updates have been added to the product recently?

We continually release product updates in response to customer feedback. Key additions recently include a new Template Editor which allows customers to speedily convert their existing paper inspection processes into iAuditor templates in one simple step.

We’ve also continuing to invest heavily in our Actions feature - allowing users to log corrective or preventive Actions while in the field. Other parties who are involved in those Actions can now attach evidence (eg photos) showing that the action has been resolved, in addition to having a Whatsapp style real-time discussion with the involved parties prior to marking as complete. 

What can we expect to see coming this year to hopefully retain this award again next year?

Our business has expanded rapidly and we now have six offices around the world. Our footprint in insurance is expanding rapidly too and we want to continue to collaborate with leading, innovative insurers to create global impact. 

We will soon be releasing an Incident Response feature within iAuditor, allowing users to report incidents while actually in the field, with notifications being sent to relevant parties, and real-time collaboration.

Our early research indicates that the volume of incidents, especially lower level incidents like near-misses will be reported when workers are empowered with a tool to snap a photo and log an incident.

Correlating incident rates and patterns with inspection behaviour across a business operation is likely to give a compelling insight into where the risk in a business lays - which we think could be very interesting for underwriting.