Here’s a recap of a talk I recently gave at InsureTech Insights Europe (a great event by the way!) about what we’ve been seeing in the London Markets broking space. Feel free to drop me a line if you’d like to discuss our experiences and learnings.
I’m Brian Doogan, co-founder at Futureform. I’m a software architect by background and frankly a bit of a tech nerd with a passion for finding ways to improve my life and my client’s lives with the clever and seamless application of modern technology.
Our team at Futureform has been embedded at some of the leading Lloyd’s brokers for the last 5 years and have witnessed first-hand an industry in transition. Covid and Blueprint 2 have accelerated a race to digitise an industry still reliant on manual processes and poor technology experiences. I want to share some observations and opportunities that we think can help elevate and empower your teams to deliver an unparalleled experience for your clients. Then I’ll share a few stories about our customers and the value they’re derived from our work.
If you don’t know us already, here’s what you need to know about Futureform: we’re a financial services-focussed technology consultancy, specialising in the Salesforce ecosystem. Our industry teams bring deep expertise and a real passion for technology to help companies deliver exceptional experiences that delight their employees and customers.
The State of the Industry
So what are we seeing in the industry? It’s an industry that has struggled to keep up with the tech innovation of the last few decades. The core broking business is run on specialty policy admin systems that are fit for a very specific purpose but offer
- an archaic user experience,
- no workflow capabilities,
- are nearly impossible to customise, and
- have extremely limited API’s and integration capabilities.
This means that your data is trapped in these data silos, and your teams can’t get value out of that data.
So what’s an employee to do? Well, of course fall back on the tried and true Microsoft stack, meaning slips are being created in Word, your Claims workflow is sitting in Outlook, and your analytics suite is a bunch of spreadsheets on a shared drive.
Meanwhile, your employees and customers are digital natives in their personal lives and expect slick digital experiences and wonder why they’re being left behind at work. All the while, changes in the market mean your systems need to adapt quickly to support things like the upcoming Blueprint 2 releases.
Empowering users and breaking down silos
So how do we empower your users, break down your data silos and remove the inefficiencies holding your teams back? We start each project with the number one enterprise software platform in the world, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud for Insurance. Then we at Futureform bring our team of experts, with deep domain knowledge of the broking space, and Industry Templates & accelerators to deliver proven solutions quickly. Finally we customise the platform to tailor it to your needs.
Why did we choose Salesforce for this critical foundation? Simply because it offers the best complete platform for our teams to build modern experiences quickly. As you’re probably already aware, Salesforce provides the best in class CRM platform as a starting point. But it also offers a deep industry solution for insurance – giving us the foundational data models, workflows, and everything else you need to cover the entire insurance value chain.
On top of this foundation we have an incredible analytics suite with native connectors to your data warehouse or Snowflake, as well as Einstein AI that lets you get actionable insights and predictionsto help your teams make better decisions.
And for your legacy applications, or those that aren’t already part of the salesforce ecosystem, we use the API-led Mulesoft integration platform and Salesforce Data Cloud to break down your data silos and expose the data that’s otherwise sitting idle in those policy admin systems.
Powering the entire brokerage lifecycle
So given the amazing tech stack we’re building upon, how does Futureform exploit it to power up the entire broking lifecycle?
On the sales side, we’ve taken the core Opportunity capability and extended it to support even the most complex multi-line programmes, while automated renewals help give you the full picture of your team’s forecast.
Tracking your pipeline is of course important, but your ability to cross-sell and report on your relationships with clients and markets depends on the quality of your data. That’s why we start every journey with our customers by looking at their trading partner management processes.
We start at the source — using data enrichment tools like Dunn & Bradstreet to simplify the search and entry of accurate company and hierarchy information.
Then integrations with KYC and AML partners like Dow Jones to keep compliance happy while giving visibility to brokers of the trading status of companies.
Finally, and most critically, we use Mulesoft APIs to push this enriched, mastered data downstream to your policy admin and other dependent systems to ensure you have one single definition of a trading partner across your entire business. Better reporting and less re-keying through the entire journey makes everyone happy.
Speaking of re-keying, we recently ran a discovery with a client and identified seventeen opportunities for re-keying information in a single risk placement. We feel very strongly about eliminating this mindless admin work.
So we enable brokers to structure risks, get quotes from markets, and place into Lloyds through digital platforms like Whitespace, all from a modern front end that is easy and intuitive to use. And as the risk progresses, we keep your policy admin system up to date automatically in the background while enabling fantastic operational reporting.
The claims lifecycle is another fantastic opportunity to take advantage of the core features of the Salesforce platform. By integrating with your Outlook we easily log comms from clients and underwriters, building a full picture of the claim, while market messaging keeps all parties up to date effortlessly. And since we’re taking your users out of Outlook, we get the advantage of rich analytics from FNOL to settlement.
Success within the London market
So let’s talk about how we applied this tech and Futureform’s experience at a few of our clients:
Lockton Re launched a few years ago and needed a system to bring together their global team on a single platform that gave them workflow, automation, and analytics. We aligned their trading partner data and opened up new cross-sell opportunities by giving teams visibility of relationships around the world.
Over at Miller Insurance, we eliminated huge amounts of rekeying, folders full of email correspondence and claims history, and gave their claims teams a modern, fast experience for navigating and searching long running claims. And with all of that information in one place, we’ll be able to leverage Salesforce’s Einstein AI capabilities to extract insights from all that rich data.
Finally at McGill and Partners we’ve just gone live with a fully digital quote-to-bind process on a modern web experience, providing access to London to North American brokers without McGill’s brokers needing to raise a finger.
Salesforce’s Financial Services Cloud for Insurance product provides the product, coverage structure, and rating, while handing off to Whitespace to bind completely digitally.
So while there are certainly technology challenges facing London Market brokers, at Futureform we’ve put together a series of solutions that can help empower your teams and deliver delightful experiences.
Are you a London broker undergoing a digital transformation project? Did these challenges resonate with you? Comment below or get in touch to discuss how Futureform can help your business maximise the power of Salesforce and drive a modern broking experience!
