Insurtech Insights from Emerging Ecosystems & Platforms London

Here’s some useful feedback from one of the Insurtech events that take place every Autumn in London now. These comments and insights are by Kelly Ward, Sales Innovation Director at AXA Partners, following his attendance at InsTech London’s Emerging Ecosystems and Platforms for Insurance event last week:

• On listening to customers: “We’ve seen a lot of start-ups coming to us as an organisation and solving what they think is the problem. But the problem is not that the customer is looking for exciting tech around their home. The problem is that they want to make the usability and the cost work.
• So we asked our customers: “if you had a perfect connected home, what would it look like?” We then looked at how much it would cost, and it was about £600. We then asked how much they would be willing to pay for it, and it was £107. That’s the problem, so how do we solve it?  We get better technology and better usability at a cheaper price.”

• On optimisation: “We’re starting to join up a lot of things, and also, exploring new ways of working. By doing so, we are able to provide added-value services to our customers, whilst meeting changing lifestyle needs. For example, we have a Start-up business within the AXA family called Fixter. Fixter provides customers with hassle-free MOTs and other garage services. Working together, we can now not only help a customer when they have broken down at the roadside, but also help them with other, day to day vehicle-based services – all of which make life easier for them.
• Another example of our current thinking, is around international breakdowns. What if we could provide a solution that returns a repaired car to the customer’s home, for when they arrive back from holiday, as opposed to getting their vehicle returned to the UK as it is and still requiring work. The most important thing here is choice. Give customers a choice of how we can help them during their time of need, to suit their individual situation.”

• On working with partners to solve problems for customers: “Quite often we get smaller start-ups telling us “do you know you’ve got a problem?” Yeah we do, we’ve been dealing with that problem for quite some time. I think the answer is, tell us why it’s a problem in the customers eyes, tell us what solution you’ve got, and tell us why it works commercially. Answer those points and you have our ear.”