Latest trading update from Polaris;
The industry owned organisation Polaris today reports insurance premiums placed through its flagship digital trading platform imarket increased by 21% to £394 million in 2023, as it invested in upgrades across its product suite to support brokers and insurers’ appetites to use digital trading.
imarket saw an investment of £1.5m in the year to futureproof its infrastructure and support its growth while Polaris also invested over £1 million in ProductWriter, its market leading rating engine.
The company reported that the digital rating environment continues to get more sophisticated as insurers adopt machine learning based algorithms and also extend digital rating to more complex products and risks. Polaris’ ProductWriter rating engine is used by 80 clients to provide the technical premium, terms and endorsements for risks, which can then be digitally traded or used as a starting point by specialist underwriters.
Reflecting its industry ownership model, Polaris’ developments and upgrades are led by users. Some 50 enhancements were made in 2023. These included additional support for machine learning based algorithms which are used by underwriters to accelerate pricing optimisation, new workflow tools and new support for pricing model imports.
ENHANCEMENTS
A major enhancement to support rating for large risks was a further addition to ProductWriter’s capabilities in 2023, with insurers increasingly using the Polaris rating engine to quote for complex fleet, property portfolios and marine risks. Additional enhancements to vastly improve the speed at which new pricing changes and new products can be deployed to the market will be rolled out in 2024. The number of policies placed via Polaris’ trading platform imarket increased 6.2% in the year from 497,883 to 528,711, breaking the half a million barrier.
The growth trajectory has been reinforced by continued investment into imarket. In November last year, Polaris concluded a £1.5m investment to move imarket into scalable cloud technology. A significant proportion of the platform was recoded to refresh the infrastructure and futureproof it for the next decade of digital trading.
Polaris’ Standards product, a shared industry language that facilitates communications between different systems and parts of the distribution chain, also issued nine new licenses and its unique client count was maintained at 105, despite market consolidation.
LIVE CHAT
Polaris also reports strong growth in its Live-Chat service. Chat volumes increased by 25% to 296,821, up from 237,105 in 2022 as insurers use it increasingly to communicate with brokers on more complex risks in a secure and auditable environment.
Managing Director Vivek Banga commented: “As an industry owned organisation, we are pleased to see the pivotal and widespread role Polaris plays to facilitate digital insurance trading across the industry. The uptick in overall GWP highlights just how essential digital trading is for the insurance ecosystem, while the growing use of ProductWriter demonstrates how digital tools are developing to support the underwriting of risks of increasing complexity and rating sophistication. Our product suite is the strongest it has ever been. We will continue to invest in new ways to connect risks with capital through fast, effective trading and innovative technology.
“We’ve seen a significant uptake in Live-Chat from our insurers over the last year and they’re increasingly seeing the benefits of being able to document the conversations between broker and insurer. This means underwriters can focus on what they do best rather than spending time answering frequently asked questions. The MI [management information] clients gain from Live-Chat also assists them in staffing their teams to make the right people available.”
He concluded: “We pledge to continue to significantly invest in our products to keep evolving them in line with the extensive feedback that we receive from the market. Our mission remains the same, to support digital trading within the industry. Huge thanks to our Board and our industry supporters – who spent over 1,000 hours across our product forums – for ensuring we can continue to do so.”
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