IAG Satellite
Award Category
Finalist Innovation
Question 1: Give a high level overview of your digital insurance innovation.
Tired of legacy thinking, legacy platforms and sick to the back teeth with poor customer experience, we’ve created a business that in two years has built an awesome team and culture with a +65 ENPS score, improved profitability by $70m, doubled customer satisfaction and built out an end-to-end technology stack to launch a new brand (Poncho Insurance) into the Australian market with a unique customer proposition. The platform is super-flexible and low-cost allowing us to continuously make the product better and deliver it at a great price to customers. And we’re just getting going. Poncho is here to completely shake up insurance, which let’s face it, hasn’t changed in decades. We are launching new innovative product features, making insurance easy to understand and bringing transparency and trust for customers. https://ponchoinsurance.com.au/ The accelerator model platform was built by creating a partner ecosystem of leading SaaS based offerings such as Salesforce and Mulesoft, connected with insuretech luminaries like Socotra and Earnix. We are focused on providing advanced capability primarily through configuration and not bespoke development.
Question 2: How have you demonstrated a strong customer focus through your project?
Poncho is built for customers who have busy lives and want control and certainty over their insurance protection, with maybe a dash of fun as well! But we believe it is best suited to families and the home ‘commander’. There’s always one who’s the sensible one, who manages the finances, pays the bills on time and protects the family with insurance. They want; everything in one place, certainty that they have great coverage, to know they’ve got a good deal and to trust their insurer they’ll be there for them when they need it. They’re busy and they’ve got better things to do then compare prices, read 100-page PDS’s, spend hours on the phone or log in and make a payment to their insurance company. Poncho has zero decisions (Value, Excesses, Options) in the buy journey, everything is online, and is a simple monthly subscription. The technology platform we’ve delivered is built around the customer, not a policy. As a result, we can add multiple products on one policy (e.g. multiple vehicles, homes, travel products all on one policy). Our insurance distribution partners can also leverage this platform to reach their customers in new and mutually beneficial ways.
Question 3: How did you use technology in your project – please expand on things like your use of analytics, AI, etc, as applicable.
In order to meet the demands of a progressive business model with ambitions to create a platform to genuinely support an iterative, always improving, customer centric experience, the accelerator platform has been designed from the ground up with SaaS (Software as a Service) based, digital native technology. The platform is built around a robust API layer that supports a plug-and-play architecture that can integrate not only with multiple policy and claims management systems, but can take advantage of new sources of data and services as they become available and as the needs of Satellite evolve. We have built an E2E (End to End) IaaS (Insurance as a Service) platform that can flex it’s features to meet the needs of the market, customers, the business or partners alike. The componentized architecture can be delivered headless (no front-end, API only), decoupled (claims management or pricing only) or end-to-end. With consumption based licencing models, the ecosystem is incentivised toward success; what Jim Collins would call “turning the flywheel”. We employ Agile development practices (Lean) including a robust CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery) framework that today includes using Bitbucket, Pipelines, BrowserStack, and other SaaS tools to automate everything we can.
Question 4: How have you measured the results and growth of this project (if available please provide data on traction, partnerships, cost-savings, revenue, etc). All information shared in this section is kept confidential.
Our objectives were two fold: improving the core portfolio and building the accelerator model. By empowering people to improve ways of working, update processes and supporting systems and being open and transparent with goals, we achieved business improvement across a diverse set of metrics, including: - +100pt improvement in team culture (Employee NPS to +65) - Improved the profitability of our partner portfolio by over $70m, with a 30pt reduction in loss ratio over 18 months - Improved Customer NPS by +25pt - Halved complaints - Improved our risk maturity to become leading in IAG - Launched Poncho Insurance, the first new direct-to-consumer brand for IAG in quite some time - Created a pipeline of new partnership opportunities that leverage new capabilities for the benefit of customers We’ve also shared numerous learnings (and some of our team!) back into IAG. these were across fraud, pricing, claims leakage, online self-service, trading, growth and ways of working.
Question 5: Please provide internal or external testimonials relating to the project if available.
A great #InsurTech example - Nigel Walsh (Co Host at InsureTech Insider) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2020-year-ahead-nigel-walsh ‘It's great way to have insurance information understood by your customers! Importantly it will build trust and loyalty - Lara Ellson – Manager, Strategy Design Aurecon Looking forward to see results for customers by demystifying the complex world of insurance... great move!! - Edith Pfister - Advisory to Boards and Executives & Interim Executive services - Chief Risk Officer and Chief Financial Officer
Question 6: Is there any other relevant written information you would like to share as part of your entry?
Critical to the success of the initiative to date has been a focus on driving improvements in three areas, being: -Mindsets; solution-focussed, optimistic, leadership support, accepting of the need to change and a willingness to do the hard thing, -Ways of working; transparent, collaborative, cross functional, test-and-learn, lean -Modern technology; cloud native, SaaS, API-lead, configuration over code, whole-of-stack mentality (developer tools through to display-layer frameworks) Building the model upwards, from people and culture, through understanding best practice in key areas of the market, towards technology that supports the vision, is how the platform got launched, and is how it will be improved into the future. The primary technology challenge initially was the restrictive strategy in place at Group, which was fit for purpose for a company harmonising brands and products onto a single, established, monolithic platform, but did not suit the needs of the business strategy at the core of the Accelerator model. Pace. Low cost. Test-and-learn. Flexible. Comfortable with ambiguity and embracing of multiple lines of enquiry and paths to success. We focused on the relentless pursuit of value, while courting controversy and internal politics. The first expression of this is Poncho, but you ain’t seen nothing yet!