The insurtech is scaling up following the launch of its no code solution last month
A personal champion at your service online – that is what Percayso stands for, according to the insurtech’s managing director Richard Tomlinson
Percayso supplies data enrichment to insurers, brokers and MGAs in personal lines.
But insurance firms will be hearing more from the business as it is now setting its sights on the commercial lines market.
Tomlinson tells Insurance Times: “Commercial lines and SME insurance is quite under-served from a data enrichment and insurance intelligence perspective, that’s partly because suppliers are not serving them well and these lines have not been as technologically advanced, but it’s changing now. I think now is the right time to push that proposition out and get them up to speed.”
The entry into commercial lines is one of several exciting strategies being pursued by Percayso, as it scales up.
Percayso beginnings
It all started around 12 years ago, when Simon James co-founded a firm called Insurance Initiatives Ltd.
The firm was responsible for pioneering the use of certain data sets, such as credit bureau data in the insurance industry for use at quote stage.
Five years later Insurance Initiatives was sold to Lexis Nexis.
However, James still felt that he had a lot of “unfinished business” with data in that more could be done, and so he founded Percayso Inform in 2018.
Tomlinson continues: “I think Percayso is a good example of ‘what more’ could be done. He [James] set up Percayso to realise all of that and fulfil potential.
“We have spent the last four years building Percayso to provide that platform and capability, but also to take it many steps forward from what was being done before.”
While Tomlinson has worked across different of sectors including financial services, telecoms, and utilities in various senior roles, this has always been data and analytics focussed.
He joined Percayso as the insurtech’s managing director in August 2018.
Fast forward to today, and Percayso is embracing a number of challenges including no-code technology and the entry into commercial lines.
The struggle to change data
Tomlinson is well aware of the challenge of entering commercial lines from a data viewpoint.
He says that commercial lines are much more complex than personal and therefore harder for data suppliers to serve them because the commercial lines market has so many different lines, and needs multiple data sets as a result.
“Personal lines is high volume, it’s easy enough to get hold of the data sets and deploy them into a live environment. In commercial it’s just a bit more complex as the data sets are harder to get hold of and interpret. That’s why it has taken so long to get to this position, it takes quite a bit of investment to put together a viable product that multiple commercial and SME insurers are going to find valuable,” he adds.
As Percayso is client-led it will be focussing on commercial property, commercial vehicle, and fleet. Meanwhile within SME it will be looking at the gig economy such as taxi and courier insurance. In addition to this it will be looking at perils, flood, fire, subsidence and theft.
Other major developments include the no code software.
No code technology solutions can be set up by companies with little to no input from specialists and IT departments as no programming or coding is required.
The aim of the new product called Percayso Inform Manager is to give insurance providers control over rating and data enrichment.
“Effectively it’s a decisioning tool that can be used on premise within firms’ existing infrastructure, any line that needs to make and adapt those decisions there is applicability,” he adds.
It allows insurers, MGAs and brokers of any size in personal or commercial lines to build and adapt data, rating and intelligence strategies.
Traditionally data enrichment providers like credit bureaus provided data in a hard coded format.
Tomlinson says: “If you want multiple data sets, it’s easier for an insurer to ingest that into their system in a coded format, but the problem is you need to engage your development team to do that.”
He highlights that when a change in the data is required, it’s a long process.
“A lot of insurers find themselves in the position where they want to change data enrichment strategies or quote manipulation strategies and rules, but they are unable to,” Tomlinson adds.
This is because these data strategy changes are often costly and long-winded, for example it could take insurers between three to six months to action this type of project, Tomlinson adds.
Costs for the insurer include the software house, data enrichment provider and internal staff resources.
Tomlinson says that Percayso’s new solution, which he believes is an insurance industry first, aims to cut this three-to-six-month project window down to minutes or hours.
This he says amounts to a huge cost and time saving.
For brokers, Tomlinson says: “It’s similar, brokers will use data enrichment to [for example] when they are quoting for business – ‘is this individual likely to cancel? what’s their likelihood to convert? And ultimately what is their lifetime value?”
When asked why the insurtech chose no code technology, he says: “We just recognise every time we need to do something that involves the development from within an insurer or broker it’s difficult for them because there are competing priorities. Putting together a no code solution means that you are shortcut this.
“Where there are non-competing areas like fraud arguably and the learning from on insurance company passed to another, we will absolutely promote that with the insurer’s blessing.”
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