Earlier in March, Insurance Business reported on the sealing of a further five-year deal between Admiral and the consultancy services firm CGI which marked the first extended agreement between the long-term partners. Outlining this collaborative partnership at the time, head of UK motor pricing & analytics at Admiral, Rhodri Charles, described Ratabase, CGI’s enterprise rating solution for vehicle and household insurance, as “central” to enabling Admiral to offer the best insurance possible to customers.
Read more: Admiral extends partnership with CGI
Now, speaking with Insurance Business, VP of financial services at CGI UK, Paul Wishman (pictured), has outlined how the service contract between Admiral and CGI first came into being and detailed the impact of the FCA’s recent pricing practices recommendations on steering innovation in pricing and underwriting.
CGI has provided rating services to Admiral since 1996, Wishman said, and he believes that the extension of the agreement between these partners is a reflection of their mutual investment in continuing this successful strategic alliance. The core service provided by this partnership is the enabling of Admiral to utilise CGI’s Ratabase IP, he said, detailing how Ratabase is the “predominant and leading insurance rating service globally” across the property and casualty (P&C) insurance market.
“Ratabase is a modular integration platform which provides insurers, managing general agents, brokers, data providers and other industry organisations the ability to control distribution and data enrichment in pricing, risk assessment and underwriting processes,” he said.
For any insurers or brokers who are looking to create long-term partnerships with businesses, Wishman stated that they should look for businesses which are determined to and able to successfully deliver on the needs of the client. His core advice would be, he said, that insurance companies do not settle for sub-standard delivery performance and then repeat the same mistakes. They should instead look for a supplier who delivers on their promises and then develop a relationship on the basis of trust.
“CGI is a company that successfully delivers on the needs of the client,” he said. “As our client portfolio demonstrates we have very long-standing relationships as a result of market-leading customer satisfaction rates.”
The customer satisfaction metrics that CGI enjoys are testament to the service the business provides and also highlight how insurance companies are increasingly valuing the customer service benefits offered by such partnerships, Wishman said, and he believes that this is a reason behind many of the business’s long-standing relationships. These customer benefits include the capacity to continually inform and work with clients to innovate, he said, and they create a potent combination of powerful functionality and ease of doing business. This helps to make the client agile and able to pivot as the market changes, he noted.
Wishman believes that in today’s insurance market, innovation in pricing and underwriting is extremely important, and this is particularly true in the light of the FCA’s pricing practices recommendations.
Outlining how businesses have been impacted by this update, he said: “To meet these recommendations, we see increasing innovation in insurance propositions to ensure the transparency and fairness of the price and terms of the proposition across new and renewing customers, while balancing the needs of the business to maintain capital and profitability.”
Today’s consumers are more informed, he stated, and can easily compare the price, and features and benefits of products across the market. Armed with this knowledge, Wishman said, consumers are open to different types of propositions that are tailored to fit their needs – and pricing and underwriting of these types of products requires the use of sophisticated tools.
