Best Insurer Extranet

This category is for UK insurer extranet platforms that have reached new heights of excellence in Etrading for the broking community.

This category is not open for entries. Nominees were selected by the Insurance Times editorial team from the results and findings of the 'Insurance Times Etrading Insight Report'.

All of the finalists are listed below. Use the links to find out more from the entrants who have answered our series of Q&As.

WINNER: NIG TheHub

What key achievement did your entry highlight?

A key achievement for NIG has been maintaining high levels of customer care, communication and efficient response times with TheHub during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the business operating remotely. In this time, we have continued to work on the launch of new software, such as Risk Assist, to ensure our standards of broker support remain high and hassle-free. We are also thrilled to be rated 5 stars for a second year running for TheHub; for us, this stands as a testament to our customer service and the value that TheHub offers, and highlights the loyalty of our brokers to NIG.

Can you share data or testimonials to back up your bid to win?

1500 active broker offices use TheHub, of which 80% have been using our extranet for packaged commercial insurance for over 4 years. Our feedback, which we regularly review to understand how we can continually improve, includes comments such as:
“I like the fact that we can input data ourselves and manually change quotes for various circumstances, this is really helpful during renewal discussions.”
“Always able to do online chat easily and referrals clear”
TheHub has 600 daily unique visitors each working day, with an average handling response time of 10 mins.

What sets your firm apart from the other shortlisted contenders?

NIG have stood out by being the only insurer to have achieved a 5-star rating from The Insurance Times eTrade survey in both 2019 and 2020 for our extranet software. Against other contenders, NIG has always ranked highly for our live chat functionality, as well as for a flexible customer journey. NIG have also been commended by users on how quick we are to resolve situations, with proactive solutions available. We pride ourselves on how effective TheHub is for brokers, as well as the quick and agile ways in which we use it to communicate with them.

How will you celebrate if you are the victor?

We see this award as recognition for all the hard work that our teams have been doing to ensure that TheHub is always available, easy to use and enables direct access to our underwriters, no matter what is happening in the wider context. As such, we feel the right way to celebrate such a victory is to involve them in the celebration, take the time to pause and reflect on what we do every day and how we engender loyalty from our brokers and their clients…. and also eat some cake!

Can you share data or testimonials to back up your bid to win?

We regularly survey brokers to ensure we are continuously improving our service. They’ve told us: “FastFlow has helped our business grow and give a better service to our clients” “Very very very helpful and thorough and professional. Can't ask for more.” “Easy to use and if we need assistance the team are on hand to help us” Brokers also rate our Live Chat service on FastFlow “Excellent”, commenting: “Very quick and useful service. Will no doubt use again in the future.” “Really helpful. Was able to agree renewal terms to assist us in retaining this business with QBE.”

What sets your firm apart from the other shortlisted contenders?

Innovation - QBE was the first to market with four innovative e-trade products not found elsewhere. Speed – We save brokers time with dynamic questions sets and a new ‘Quick Quote’ feature which gives an indicative quote in 60 seconds. Service – We launched Live Chat on FastFlow to give brokers another way to get quick answers to questions. It’s been successful. We have so far “live chatted” with brokers over 4,000 times. Product experts - QBE coined the phrase ‘e-trade with a human touch’ because we know brokers like to deal with experienced, empowered underwriters behind the technology.

How will you celebrate if you are the victor?

FastFlow’s ongoing success as a well-used and respected e-trade platform has been achieved by many QBE people and teams working together with the purpose of giving our broker partners the fastest, easiest and most efficient way to service customers’ insurance needs. Winning this award will be a tremendous achievement and we will share the celebration with them.