Insurer innovation of the year

Winner

Axa Insurance

How can an insurer solve an age-old problem faced by brokers? Faced with all the traditional pressures, now compounded by new FSA and technology considerations, how can brokers increase their commercial client base by becoming more marketing led? How can they access all the benefits of a full-time marketing manager without actually recruiting, at a fraction of the cost? The answer: AXA's Prospect Manager

Prospect Manager is a new and unique support service to help brokers win quality new SME business. It is a totally practical service designed to emulate the service of a quality marketing manager. It ensures that brokers have highly targeted new business development activity all year round without any impact on resource levels. Brokers have full control over all activity and can easily increase or decrease activity according to their growth plans.

AXA has provided marketing support to over 200 brokers during the last five years and understands the marketing problems faced by partner intermediaries.

Most brokers want to be more proactive and recognise the need to build awareness for their business, particularly by differentiating their capability through risk management.

Launched in February 2003, by the end of August 2003, 70% of partner brokers had already signed up to the initiative, which clearly demonstrates broker appetite for this product and service.

As Prospect Manager enables each broker to target 1000 local SMEs, many thousands of companies are now receiving regular communication about the benefits of risk management. A new business conversion rate from participating brokers highlights how the initiative successfully generates new clients by enabling brokers to be more marketing led.

Highly commended

ACE European Group

ACE was looking for ways to update current underwriting practices in order to maximise business success and allow for best utilisation of time for the ACE underwriters and also for the broking community as a whole.

ACE's Trading Floor gives the broker access to all lines of business in one area which encourages cross-selling and makes life easier for the broking community. All this using the state-of-the-art technology.

The success of this type of facility where brokers have easy, time efficient access to the whole range of property, casualty, energy and financial lines as well as marine and accident and health and treaty reinsurance in one area is borne out by the number of brokers that visit. Average monthly number of brokers visiting the floor is 5450.

This type of facility is the first to be created outside Lloyd's, demonstrating ACE's ability to pioneer change and increase its commitment to London, a global centre of insurance and reinsurance business.

Brit Insurance

The challenge that led to the international B2B e-business initiative, Brit MTCinteractive, was at one level very simple and at another dauntingly complex - that of how to use technology to create the capability for a real time link between:

- One Lloyd's syndicate;

- 60 Lloyd's brokers;

- 800 US surplus lines brokers;

- 20,000 US retail brokers; and

- Over 1.5 million US truckers.

Not only did the system have to accommodate physical distances of some 4000 miles and time differences of up to eight hours, but also it needed to deliver real improvements in transactional efficiency if all involved were to buy into it.

Now a reality, Brit MTCinteractive has delivered a number of crucial differences for its four different groups of users. For a start it offers real-time processing, co-ordination and transaction knowledge and full 'end-to-end' processing, including claims, while the use of paper, faxes and such like has been eliminated.

Most crucially, however, is that, unlike most e-commerce applications, Brit MTCinteractive has been developed on a wholly internet-based application service provider (ASP) model, it requires no special hardware or software.

You just plug into any phone line to get 24/seven access.

This means implementation costs are zero for the US surplus lines broker or retail broker. Equally important, the ASP approach also means the system requires no technology that might quickly become obsolete.

All in all, therefore, Brit MTCinteractive has delivered a surprisingly simple solution, from the user's point of view, to a complex challenge, so making life much easier and improving transactional efficiency for all parties.

The Drainage Forum

The drainage industry is not known for its high levels of customer service or quality of workmanship, yet is an important part of the service provided directly and indirectly by insurers, and costs insurers almost £100m a year in drainage claims

The Drainage Forum comprises a group of Insurers - Royal & SunAlliance, CIS, Churchill, Norwich Union and Zurich - who, supported by the ABI, collectively worked together as a team with drainage industry experts to resolve this problem area. Out of their joint deliberations came a best practice document accepted by the entire insurance industry, as well as drainage contractors, and other trade bodies. The document, which was formally launched at Westminster, is also being widely adopted outside the insurance community as being the benchmark for repair quality.

However, it is not just about improvement in quality. There is evidence that drainage claims may cost up to 30% less when carried out by drainage companies who subscribe to best practice. Currently the Drainage Forum is introducing a Drainage investigators scheme, creating a network of drainage experts who have specific understanding of drainage issues and the application of new best practices, to ensure they are maintained and improved upon.

The model for working together has been so successful that it is being similarly adopted in the development of flood damage best practice. The essence, say the team, is that the insurance industry is capable of working together to solve mutual problems in non-competitive areas, and at the same time show leadership and benefit to the wider community.