Close Brothers launches new digital tools for brokers

Two tools aim to help better manage premium finance portfolio

Close Brothers launches new digital tools for brokers

Technology

By Roxanne Libatique

Close Brothers Premium Finance (CBPF) has launched new data insight and enrichment tools to help its 1,600 partner brokers better manage their premium finance portfolio.

The new digital tools, branded “Foresight” for PL brokers and “Focus 360” for commercial lines, will be available to CBPF partners.

Foresight was built using CBPF’s customer outcome data, supplemented by data from a leading UK price comparison website (PCW), and developed with the help of CBPF’s technology partner CDL. Foresight Scores are machine learning models updated monthly that dynamically predict consumer behaviour and score new car insurance customers at point of quote.

“The Foresight Scores are a first for the premium finance sector and allow PL brokers, especially high-volume brokers that use PCWs, to predict who is likely to cancel mid-term and pay annually or monthly,” said Seán Kemple, managing director, motor finance & premium finance, at CBCF. “Retro analysis has proven that for a broker who used an existing cancellation model, the Foresight cancellation score added an additional 10% improvement in accuracy in predicting future cancellations, a crucial advantage for brokers in the highly competitive motor market.”

Kemple added that brokers already using CDL may access Foresight through their existing CDL platform: “It’s easy to integrate into the ratings engine and is an easy switch on - there’s no bespoke build. For non-CDL users, CBPF will arrange access via an API, which will enable brokers to link it to their ratings engine.”

Meanwhile, Focus 360 was developed as an interactive dashboard in partnership with interactive data visualisation software company Tableau to give brokers advanced metrics, KPIs, and peer benchmarking. It gives commercial lines brokers a retrospective view of premium finance data by providing learnings from historical performance to help make better business decisions.

“With Focus 360, brokers can analyse payment delays and/or commission by policy type. They can see the gap between policy renewal and loading of loan; brokers can benchmark themselves to improve competitiveness. Also, Focus 360 can provide a better understanding of a broker’s penetration by sector and enhance understanding of the relationship between costs and retention ratios,” Kemple said.

Both tools will be available for brokers to demo at the forthcoming BIBA conference.

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