Bancassurance

The Competitive Environment

Banks, Building Societies and Retail Financial Institutions need to exploit two key assets: their customer base and their branch network. While the branch continues to be the preferred channel for buying products, new channels and new providers are encroaching into their once recognised domain. For example, in the UK, mortgage providers are losing share in the Household insurance market. In the UAE, the inception of a mortgage market is creating significant opportunities for mortgage related insurances. In both cases, the availability of innovative products will determine the banks ability to capitalise on their customer base and their branch, internet and telephone channels.

Personal Lines: An estimated 28% of consumers in the UK continue to purchase household insurance through a bank or building society, however, this figure has been in serious decline in recent years as more direct providers have entered the market. While the big three banks have continued to grow market share, most of the remaining providers struggle to improve the sophistication of their product offering to meet evolving consumer demand. This is also true for products distributed separately of existing mortgage platforms as stand alone products e.g. motor, health, travel, pet insurance.

Commercial Lines: Only 3% of SME’s currently purchase their insurance from a bank. Despite having a relationship with 97% of these organizations through the Business Account (often as a loss leader), banks have been unable to leverage their relationships and channel advantages. While there is huge potential, growth in this sector is unlikely unless innovative solutions can be provided to attract the customer base.

The Market Opportunity

To take advantage of their customer base and extensive distribution networks, bancassurers need:

• To offer more innovative, competitive products
• To improve the timing of the offer

A critical success factor will be time to market. Often constrained by the lead time in delivering IT systems to support, bancassurers will need to improve their ability to launch new products without investing in additional costly IT infrastructure in order to offer competitive, relevant and variable insurance products. Those bancassurers who aggressively pursue this option should achieve competitive advantage in an increasingly tough market, allowing them to drive revenue per branch, offer enhanced customer service, achieve greater share of wallet and improve market share.

Without variable ratings engines and more competitive products, most observers agree that bancassurers face a very uncertain future.

The UniRisX Solution

UniRisX is the on demand global insurance service that allows bancassurers to deliver innovative products that meet customer needs. We offer a flexible alternative to existing systems by offering a web based service for the rapid creation, launch and life-cycle management of general insurance products.

Crucially, UniRisX can enable bancassurers to give their customers the ability to tailor an insurance package to suit their individual needs at the time they are already making related purchasing decisions. Thus, when buying a mortgage, UniRisX can be used to offer a “Wrap Product” including Household, Term Assurance, Creditor and perhaps Medical.

In the SME sector, where purchasing decisions are not particularly price sensitive but based on the quality of the product, ease and convenience of the purchasing process, UniRisX can offer a Wrap including any combination of Property, Liability and Key Man.

We can help bancassurers quickly deliver any combination of product from simple payment protection to the most complex Commercial Combined product. This customer service enhancing offer can be made at the time when the Business Account is being finalised, ensuring decision making for the SME is simple, convenient and for relevant products.

UniRisX is built on industry standards and can be integrated to complement and enhance existing systems, rather than replace them. The Wrap products mentioned can be implemented in a few weeks at most, using the power of the UniRisX web based service. Once launched, all products can be administered on a Straight Thru Processing basis (STP), which would usually reduce administrative costs.

Learn more about UniRisX click here or to discuss our Bancassurance Solutions contact Tony Ferguson Questo indirizzo e-mail è protetto dallo spam bot, abilitare Javascript per vederlo