Category: Advisers
Making sense of the changes can be complex but with The Duty coming into force on 31st July, we caught up with Uinsure’s Chief Governance Officer, Brionie Hemingway, who has helped to shed light on exactly what firms have been asked to do.
What worked well in preparation for Consumer Duty?
The Duty is very broad but breaking it down into manageable chunks and prioritising certain elements of the work was key for us but, in addition to that, it is invaluable to talk to partners about how you can support each other.
If you take the Fair Value Assessment as an example, it’s important to understand how each party in the chain – whether that be insurer, distributor or manufacturer – is supporting value and how they’re supporting customers’ financial objectives. Fair Value as an outcome, is a combination of efforts from all parties to joined up understanding is important.
How do you demonstrate a customer outcome?
This is a bit of a holy grail within the industry and has typically been evidenced through the likes of NPS scores, as one example, but there can be a lot more to it.
I think it’s really important to use both qualitative and quantitative information, so you have in-depth data together with wide ranging case studies that support the consumer metrics to paint a collective picture.
How do you continually prove fair value?
GI firms will already have grappled with fair value, but it is still a fundamental part of the new Consumer Duty; fair value isn’t the same thing as offering a rock bottom price though. It’s about reasonable remuneration for work done or service delivery. Price is one aspect of value, but quality of cover and accessibility of services are really relevant too.
We believe assessing fair value involves a detailed process of weighing up the cost to serve and the utility of products versus the amount of money actually leaving the customer’s pocket.
Continuous holistic assessment is needed because factors like customer circumstances, technology and the wider market are changing all the time. Services like claims processes and access to useful add-ons are features that can add value, or just as easily detract value, so keeping on top of service provision fits right into the value assessment.
Can you ever be fully compliant or is it an ongoing exercise?
This is a really important point. Every time new regulation or initiatives come into force, firms naturally spend a lot of energy getting ready for the ‘go live’ date and can then have something of drop off while other business priorities come back to the fore.
With the new Consumer Duty, elements like the delivery of outcome are going to be very much an ongoing exercise and one that is always evolving as the industry itself changes and the technology we use continues to improve.
The FCA has already made it clear that Consumer Duty will be an ongoing feature and we need to deliver a report to the board on an annual basis to evidence we are continuously meeting the standards. As a result, it should really form part of the fabric of all organisations from here on in – if it isn’t already.
Leeds Building Society Partners with Uinsure to Deliver Home Insurance Quote in as Little as 60 Seconds
Leeds Building Society has further cemented its investment in northern FinTech by announcing a partnership with leading insurance technology firm, Uinsure, that will allow Society customers to arrange home insurance through one of the quickest and most simple journeys on the market.
Working with Manchester-based Uinsure, Leeds Building Society members can get a quote online in as little as 20 seconds, and in branches in a matter of minutes – a fraction of the time its takes with direct insurers and aggregators – by answering three simple questions; their name, date of birth and postcode.
The partnership will offer the Society’s customers access to seven leading underwriters who each compete to offer the lowest price on Uinsure’s 5 star Defaqto rated policy, with the cheapest being presented to members.
John Scally, Head of commercial Development at Leeds Building Society, said:
“Our purpose is to put homeownership in reach of people, and this partnership with Uinsure means we can offer our members peace of mind that their property is protected should they suffer any unexpected loss or damage.
“We have made use of new technology to simplify the application process in order to encourage people to protect their homes, which is usually the most expensive asset people own.
“It’s important to us that our service is accessible for everyone, so customers will be able to apply online, in one of our branches, over the telephone or alongside their mortgage application with Leeds Building Society.”
Martin Schultheiss, Uinsure Group Managing Director, commented:
“We’re delighted that, Leeds Building Society has chosen us at its new insurance provider, meaning their members can use our technology to easily buy insurance and choose a high quality policy offered by seven top UK insurers.
“Our goal is to remove insurance complexity by using technology and data to make insurance more convenient and accessible for people across the UK and our new partnership supports our strategy of leading innovation in UK Bancassurance.
“The partnership also underlines how smart insurance technology can play a big part in helping people protect their homes and we’re excited to deliver this to Leeds Building Society members.”
The Right Mortgage & Protection Network and DA Club have announced a new partnership with Uinsure’s new digital product, UinsureCX, which allows advisers to automate insurance quotes during the mortgage advice journey.
Member firms of both the network and DA Club will now be able to refer clients to UinsureCX in order to automate building and contents (B&C) insurance quotes for their clients and to offer a five star Defaqto-rated B&C product.
UinsureCX tracks an individual client’s mortgage process and provides them with fully-automated communications at key moments during their mortgage journey such as application, offer and exchange.
Once referred to UinsureCX by the adviser, the client receives automated communications that are personalised to their specific mortgage type and individual circumstances.
The clients then arrange their own cover through a simplified journey that takes less than 60 seconds at their own convenience.
Amy Wilson, Head of General Insurance (GI and PMI) at The Right Mortgage, commented:
“The Right Mortgage is excited to be introducing UinsureCX to bring a new dimension to our service offerings. This collaboration reflects our commitment to delivering comprehensive solutions that meet our adviser member and their clients’ evolving needs. By incorporating UinsureCX’s capabilities into the TRM proposition, we’re taking a significant step towards providing a holistic experience that encompasses both mortgages and insurance.”
Lauren Bagley, Chief Distribution Officer at Uinsure, said:
“Teaming up with The Right Mortgage allows us to support more advisers to focus on delivering exceptional service to their clients. TRM advisers can now capitalise on the power of technology and data to drive their insurance strategy, while their clients can now enjoy a streamlined and digitised insurance journey that seamlessly aligns with their mortgage progress.”
For more information on The Right Mortgage & Protection Network, The Right DA Club, and sister companies The Later Life Lending Network or The Right PMI & Healthcare, please contact: joinus@therightmortgage.co.uk or visit www.therightmortgage.co.uk
UinsureCX drives digital transformation in the mortgage intermediary market, backed by newly invested trading optimisation and data teams
UinsureCX, the digital insurance technology introduced by Uinsure in March this year, is reshaping how insurance can be offered to intermediary clients with 25,000 referrals received via the platform in Q2 alone.
As the adoption curve of digital insurance among advisers accelerates, the technology is helping Uinsure and its partners transform the way insurance is provided in the intermediary market, with 200 firms now using the digital product.
In an industry where up to an estimated 75% of mortgage customers buy insurance outside of the intermediary market, the technology recognises the importance of offering an insurance quote to all mortgage customers, employing intermediary data collected during the mortgage fact-finding process and then using this data-driven strategy to provide personalised and precise insurance quotes directly to customers through digital channels as they move through their mortgage journey.
“We’re delighted by the response to UinsureCX, exemplified not only by the 25,000 referrals received last quarter but also by the rapid rate of intermediary adoption that means over 200 firms are now using the technology,” said Martin Schultheiss, Group Managing Director of Uinsure.
Strengthening UinsureCX’s development are the newly invested trading optimisation and data teams. These dedicated teams are actively refining the digital product by analysing customer behaviour and then using this insight to further optimise journeys for different segments of customers.
“Our commitment to innovation and collaboration with intermediaries is proven by the impact that UinsureCX is already having on the industry. The recent investment in our trading optimisation and data teams reinforces our dedication to refining our digital product to meet the evolving needs of customers. Their efforts ensure that UinsureCX remains adaptable and responsive to customer feedback and experience.”
By Lauren Bagley
When you think of general insurance (GI) advice in the intermediary world, it’s invariably the third or fourth priority for most regulated firms. So why would I choose B2B insurtech?
To put it simply, I chose this career to challenge the status quo in an area with so much opportunity. GI remains an enormous and relatively untapped lever for growth across pretty much all advisory businesses.
The Systemic Conundrum
The big conundrum is that every customer needs at least buildings insurance alongside every mortgage, therefore why is there so much disparity between what the customer needs and what advisory firms offer? I’ve been exposed to this systemic challenge and the various reasons why ever since I began my financial services career. Is this something that can change? I firmly believe so.
More Exciting Things Than Comparing Home Insurance
The decision to join Uinsure in particular, was made even easier because of its tech investment and its ambition to use tech to differentiate itself against a very saturated and traditional marketplace. We’re not short of insurance distributors and manufacturers in the intermediary market and those that recognise the power of data, digital journeys and technology to deliver against continually evolving consumer wants, needs and expectations will ultimately help solve the aforementioned “conundrum”. Plainly speaking, I think we can all agree that there’s plenty more exciting things to spend our time on than comparing home insurance – so let’s make it easier, faster and overall more effective. All I would add here is watch this space.
A Redefining Experience
The obsession Uinsure shares in relation to customer experience also drew me. For example, its belief that customers should not be expected to remember their renewal date to maintain a competitive premium. For far too long the industry has labelled “savvy” customers as those who are consistently scouring the market to find the best deal each year, but why should anyone be expected to do that? This mindset of customer centricity is absolutely where innovation starts to happen.
Advisers Have the Advantage
And then there’s the biggest shake up in the insurance market for decades. Following the FCA’s recent GI Pricing Practice proposals, there’s an expectation that pricing will equalise considerably across direct, aggregator and intermediary channels, as a result of the proposed ban on “price walking”. In a nutshell I think this will mean that advisory firms can make headway in a fairer market and will naturally start to capture more market share.
More so than any brands on the planet – advisory firms are a trusted voice to loyal customers and certainly best positioned to make sure that home insurance needs are covered and up to date. Firms also have the first indication that home insurance may be needed – so we should not give up that opportunity to others.
If you’ve managed to get this far in the article (!), thanks for reading and if you have any questions or thoughts, please feel free to share, comment or drop a message on LinkedIn.
Covéa Insurance will be joining the likes of AXA, Ageas, LV=, RSA and UK General on Uinsure’s Adviser Platform, aiming to drive a much greater pricing competitiveness and expanding the total insurers on its Home Insurance product to seven.
The multi-award winning insurer has a Standard and Poor’s AA- rating as a guaranteed subsidiary of Covéa, over 60 years trading experience and over 2.1m policyholders in the UK.
In tandem with Covéa Insurance joining Uinsure’s Adviser Platform, Uinsure will now also recognise up to 9 years No Claims Discount on both buildings and contents cover, expanding from the previous maximum of 5 years.
Martin Schultheiss, Group Managing Director at Uinsure commented:
“We’re really pleased to welcome Covéa Insurance to Uinsure’s Adviser Platform. Covéa will help us to deliver even more competitively priced, 5 star rated home insurance to customers, across a much wider range of property risks.
The addition of Covéa Insurance supports our mission to grow intermediary distribution of home insurance across the UK by equipping advisers to deliver against the needs of their customers. We believe that our focus on premium value, quality of cover and exceptional customer experience enabled by Uinsure’s technology capability, gives intermediaries a clear differentiator that is hard to match elsewhere.”
By Martin Schultheiss
CompareTheMarket recently launched a range of online execution-only remortgages with two of the largest lenders in the UK. I’m sure this headline will have grabbed the attention of anyone that leads a mortgage firm and intends to grow their business over coming years and quite rightly so.
In fact, if you log on to any well-known price comparison website, you’ll find that it’s not just insurance products that are part of their overall game plan. Next to the usual compare home insurance or travel insurance buttons, you’ll see options for protection, conveyancing and now also unsurprisingly, a pathway to self-serve a remortgage.
Last year, around 600,0000 people who had been advised on a mortgage by a firm like you, found their home insurance elsewhere. Furthermore, these sites have also collected upwards of 60 personal and property data fields per quote, providing vast intelligence to market your clients with sophisticated, highly personalised communications to deepen that new founded relationship.
Today’s reality is that most people choose financial advisers to arrange a mortgage, but this does not rule out how much power online brands are gaining by building relationships with a footfall of your clients who seek wider product advice alongside their mortgage. From home insurance to conveyancing, these products are a likely need of your client throughout the homebuying process, if not a legal requirement of the mortgage. It therefore makes a lot of sense for advisory businesses to take these products more seriously to make sure they’re delivering against their client needs.
Mortgage advice certainly opens the door to the potential of building a successful business, but what is becoming more apparent to me is that the breadth of service across wider product areas, is the key to protecting and retaining a loyal and longstanding client base which is well-served. Frankly, I believe it’s a necessity to build sustainable and long-lasting client relationships in 2021 and beyond.
The irony is that innovation in home insurance and conveyancing technology for intermediaries has moved much faster than many direct-to-consumer services. I can’t stress enough that it’s not about spending more hours working, late nights filling in forms or rekeying data. The answer is to choose the right technology partner, who can tangibly evidence their capability to integrate and embed these services within your business.
So, if I asked you now to consider offering wider financial services and advice to your clients, would you?
Uinsure have today launched a new tech platform that aims to remove insurance complexity for advisers and their clients. It coincides with the unveiling of a brand refresh for the first time since its inception in 2007.
“Uinsure’s rebrand is not just cosmetic. It represents a maturing of the company, from the inside out that is setting the pace and responding to the demands of our industry by designing the experiences, products and services advisers and their clients expect” said Lauren Bagley, Uinsure’s Chief Distribution Officer.
Lauren continues, “The value that is enabled through our technology is the toughest thing to communicate. Words only means so much – you have to be the words and hence our decision to refresh the brand.
“It’s a major milestone for us as the Uinsure brand becomes synonymous with technology that empowers advisers to provide an insurance experience that kills the complexity that we believe exists in accessing insurance today.”
Martin Schultheiss, Group Managing Director agrees, saying: “Our Adviser Platform introduces innovation that gives advisers the opportunity to outstrip the advantages of direct-to-consumer insurance distributors and deliver greater value to consumers across home, BTL/landlords, non-standard and commercial insurance in one location. Our tech has always been a key differentiator and now that we’ve upgraded this even further, we’re able to be agile, which is now more important than ever against the demand from advisory businesses to digitise their businesses too.
“There’s a big difference between a company that offers technology and actually being a technology company. The latter is the journey that Uinsure has been working towards for the last 36 months. It’s been tough at times; building technology is hard but building technology that makes a difference is even harder. It has required a fundamental shift in culture, structure, process and a complete obsession about our partner and customer needs. We’re now seeing this investment pay off with the delivery of our new Adviser Platform and a refreshed brand to match our ambitions. We’re so excited about the future and this is just the first of several new technology solutions that will be released in 2021.”
The new platform seamlessly enables advisers to receive an insurance quote across home, buy to let and commercial in 3 questions (name, date of birth and postcode) and from there advisers can configure the cover and apply within minutes. It can now be accessed anywhere, on any device and includes features such as giving clients the choice to progress their application in their own time once the quote has been configured, providing clients with an ‘always on’ experience.
In addition to using big data to remove traditional lengthy and complex question sets, it also accesses new build postcode data up to 6 months before postcodes are minted by Royal Mail, meaning advisers can get new build properties insured faster.
Referrals to Uinsure’s GI advisers can now also be made in a few clicks, if the referring adviser does not want to provide the advice themselves. It also has the ability for advisers to flag customer vulnerabilities which then helps Uinsure to deal with clients in the most appropriate way post-sale.
Features of Uinsure’s new Adviser Platform
- Uinsure’s Adviser Platform has removed complex and lengthy questions from its journey using big data and third-party integrations to prefill information and therefore remove the need to rekey or answer complex questions.
- Advisers can deliver a quote in three questions (name, date of birth and postcode) and from there can configure the cover and apply in minutes.
- Advisers can give their clients the choice to progress their application in their own time once the quote has been configured, giving clients an ‘always on’ experience.
- It can provide a seamless, straight through digital experience for all types of properties, even if the circumstances are unusual or non-standard.
- It accesses new build postcode data up to 6 months before postcodes are minted by Royal Mail, meaning advisers can get new build properties insured faster.
- It gives the ability to refer to Uinsure’s GI advisers in a few clicks if the referring adviser does not want to provide the advice themselves.
- It has the ability for advisers to flag customer vulnerabilities which then helps Uinsure to deal with clients in the most appropriate way.
- The pricing methodology reflects the proposed FCA final rules on GI pricing practices, ensuring that existing customers are treated like new customers at renewal.