The UK’s largest mutual life insurance and pensions company, Royal London, has become the first British company to use Willis Towers Watson’s Radar Live quotation software for life insurance business.

The Radar Live insurance rating system, which enables a wide range of analytics to be deployed at the point of quote, is designed to reduce the risk of costly errors and create material operational efficiencies.

The mutual insurer now also uses the same pricing delivery software to provide quotations for the intermediary protection market. Radar Live features enhanced pricing flexibility as well as responsiveness to market developments.

Commenting on Royal London’s move, Willis Towers Watson director Alastair Black noted: “Radar Live is already licensed by a majority of the UK motor market, but this represents the first such use of the software in the life insurance market.

“This reflects the increasing sophistication of the protection market in gaining a more granular understanding of customer behaviour, in developing clear, implementable customer fairness principles, and also in being able to price in a far more agile way.”

In the broking behemoth’s view, the adoption is an indication of a wider market trend. Willis Towers Watson pointed to what it described as intense competitive pressure faced by insurers to employ new data sources and advanced analytic techniques in setting rates while delivering these rates and rules with speed and accuracy.

“The use of Radar Live allows us to be far more reactive to the market, and gives the pricing team the ability to change prices in a quick but controlled way and to add in new pricing factors easily, without the need for a large IT project,” said Royal London Intermediary protection pricing head Alan Clarkson.

“We’re excited about the additional flexibility this will give us to help maintain and grow our competitive position.”

Meanwhile Black added that they are happy to have built on Willis Towers Watson’s previous pricing work with Royal London to help the latter stay at the forefront of pricing sophistication in the market.