In its response to HM Treasury’s consultation paper on draft innovation for financial services the British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA) highlighted a number of barriers to innovation in the insurance broker sector.

Firstly, the sheer weight of regulatory change that the insurance broking community has had to deal with over the last few years, from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) has resulted in a significant amount of resource being diverted away from developments to heighten customer experience.

Secondly, whilst BIBA welcomes initiatives such as the FCA’s Project Innovate and the we have found that this has not in all cased in all cases expedited the granting of necessary permissions for new Fintech operations in the sector and has not fully addressed the use of social media as a business generator.

Graeme Trudgill, BIBA Executive Director said; “The recent Enterprise Act includes measures that will help reduce the regulatory burden on business and we hope that the FCA will be included in these measures. It appears often that regulators’ do not make best use of technology hampering fast moving firms that want to bring new products to market.  BIBA members are forward thinking and insurance brokers are often the biggest innovators in financial services but they need the support and the infrastructure to make developments customer ready.”