14 Jun 2017
"The winds of change are blowing wild and free"
Bob Dylan (To make you feel my love)
Endless amounts of noise and copy have been devoted to the subject of ‘disruption’ and it’s been something of a buzz-word in the insurance industry for a while now. Disruption is really nothing new, however, and certainly nothing to be frightened...
13 Jun 2017
Against a constantly changing claims landscape, insurers must offer services that meet their customers' needs and expectations. As a result, and following an extensive review, Allianz is proposing to combine its commercial and household claims units to create one property claims team in Milton Keynes.
Our review showed there were clear strengths and...
25 May 2017
Chris Blackham takes a look at the main issues confronting those starting a new insurance brokerage
When, in 1984, I started my first brokerage there wasn't quite as much regulatory red tape as there is today. You could say that, unlike Winston Smith in George Orwell’s novel “1984”, I didn’t have to deal with Big Brother - very...
18 May 2017
It has taken 16 years to sort out the mess left behind by the failed insurance company Independent.
Here former employee Paul Handleigh and youTalk-insurance founder looks back over the demise of the company that started with such grand plans, and its unbelievably long liquidation process
I received an unexpected letter from PwC the other day. They are...
15 May 2017
Andy Talbot, Head of Sales at ARAG Legal Services shares his thoughts on attending a decade of BIBA conferences...
While BIBA 2017 was the association’s 39th conference, it’s now ten years since ARAG first exhibited. Many of us were already BIBA veterans, of course, but the eleven BIBAs that have taken place over the decade since I drove up to ExCel...
4 May 2017
With BIBA on the horizon, Covéa Insurance’s Keith Hector takes the long view on the importance of being open and reaching out to new connections.
“It’s often said that regardless of the vast number of people working in the insurance it remains a small and tight-knit community of individuals. Naturally with age that becomes even truer....
27 Apr 2017
With the 2017 BIBA Conference just a week away, I am very much looking forward to heading to Manchester where there will be plenty of opportunities to connect with many of our broker partners. I’ll also be looking forward to exploring this year’s conference theme ‘Connections’, a topic which really could not be more relevant to the insurance...
10 Feb 2017
Change is coming, and insurers need to be ready for it if they do not want further pressure on bottom lines
When the Enterprise Act 2016 was passed into law on 4th May 2016 a flurry of legal comment flooded the market as firms sought to be the first to lead the debate. However, as the new regime was not due to come into force for another year, the market’s...
13 Dec 2016
A couple of years ago an Ernst & Young survey in the UK revealed that just 7% of consumers have "complete trust" in their insurer. It was reported that UK insurance customers were found to hold more trust in the banking sector, despite the severe reputational damage it has suffered over the last seven years, than in their insurance provider.
...
9 Sep 2016
With over 3,500 insurance brokers in the UK, many of these companies rely on the use of search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC) to drive sales through Google, Bing and other search engines.
There are around 550,000 monthly searches for the term ‘car insurance’ on Google, not to mention the 50,000 for ‘van insurance...
9 Jun 2016
As insurance markets transform and providers compete with other financial services organizations for business, evolving their operational strategies will no longer be optional – it will be critical. A big piece of this is, of course, technology. Insurance companies need IT solutions that foster the enablement of new strategies and help them drive...
11 Apr 2016
Have you ever been frustrated when your Coach or Mentor doesn't seem to understand what it's like to work in your world?
Most coaches subscribe to the notion that you do not need to be a subject matter expert in order to coach or mentor effectively, and of course this can be true. It is also true however that where both people can speak the same business...
10 Mar 2016
It was fascinating to read the results of Xchanging plc’s survey at the end of last year, which revealed that only one-third of insurers in the London Market believe their firm could withstand a major cyber-attack, and almost half felt they were underprepared, according to a survey conducted by the company.
Xchanging rightly points out that as...
7 Mar 2016
Why do I dislike these two tasks so much? Simple answer – they are both painful experiences!
I doubt I’m alone in the first as there can’t be many SME owners/employees or self employed that can honestly say they enjoy the preparation of annual returns to HMRC to tell them how much of their hard earned cash they should willingly hand over...
22 Feb 2016
Very rarely now does the customer deal with a third party
The internet started the revolution of connecting people with products and that was bought alive by the trading platforms such as eBay and Amazon which facilitate the direct relationship between consumer and seller.
We now even have websites that allow the designers of products to sell their wares...
14 Jan 2016
20 years in minibus insurance...
1995. What a year… Amazon sold its first book, Ebay set up shop online, ‘Toy Story’ was the first computer-animated film, Robson & Jerome were topping the pop charts with ‘Unchained Melody’, and PC users were clamouring to get their hands on Windows 95.
It was also the year I attended a job...
4 Jan 2016
It seems there is no chance that the M&A market for insurance intermediaries will slow down anytime soon.
When Marsh agreed to pay close to 15x EBITDA for Jelf it was clear that the appetite for insurance brokers remains very healthy. It's an interesting move for Marsh as they signal a dramatic move into the SME market and I fully expect Marsh to support...
19 Nov 2015
Since starting my own SEO and PPC agency in January, I get asked all kinds of questions about digital marketing – How do I get my site on page 1 tomorrow? This person says they’ll do the same thing for half the price. Why should I trust you?
For those that aren’t involved in digital marketing on a daily basis, the premise of getting your company...
16 Oct 2015
I’m told that, apparently, no-one really chooses a career in insurance. It’s an industry that most people just seem to fall into at different stages of their life. My own experience would suggest that this is indeed the case.
With 20 years’ experience in marketing and managing small businesses, mainly in the IT and software arena, I...
12 Oct 2015
OK, this may seem like on odd question to pose on a site hosting hundreds of clips from dozens of insurers, viewed by thousands in the industry, so there’s an element of preaching to the converted here.
But elsewhere in the market, there’s still some hesitancy about video’s place in marketing strategies. Even among the biggest players, there are...