Technology: Commercial e-trading starts to come of age at Biba 2010

Open GI used this year's conference to launch Ebroker, a quote-and-buy program enabling brokers to sell products for small and medium-sized enterprises to clients using the internet.

The firm's full-cycle offering provides comparative quotes from a range of insurers for property owners and tradesman products, with further category launches scheduled throughout the year. For a one-off fee of under £10,000 and an ongoing licence charge of around £2,000, brokers receive back-office integration, web design, corporate branding and secure online payment processing, allowing consumers to purchase cover instantly.

Simon Hughes, sales and marketing director at Open GI, said: "It should be no more difficult for a broker to trade commoditised products than private motor. Around 85% of new motor business comes from the internet, principally price comparison websites, so why should it be any different for commoditised packaged commercial?"

Hughes added that the software house, which deals with 18 price comparison sites, believes aggregators are increasingly looking at SME opportunities, predicting that the market will mature by the first quarter of 2011.

SME-focused technology was also the order of the day for Acturis, which provided a visual demonstration of the flow of e-trade commercial business. A real-time graph linked to the company's database was on display to show the number of e-quotes the firm was handling that day for lines such as commercial combined, property owners', shops and tradesman.

Live feed
Simon Ronaldson, sales and marketing director at Acturis, commented: "[The graph] will get to about 10,000 before the day is out. A lot of people are saying e-trade is going to happen in the commercial space but this is tangible proof that it is already happening. A lot of the insurers have been blown away by how much volume is now going through."

Ronaldson also pointed out that, six months ago, e-traded packaged commercial combined offerings did not really exist but that it is now becoming prominent, with premiums often up to £4,000. The next area to receive Acturis' attention is mini-fleets: two insurers are signed up already and a third is on the way. Ronaldson said: "Once we have it to sit alongside our small commercial combined package it means, for most businesses, that they can trade all aspects of their basic insurance needs on an e-trade basis."

High activity
Ronaldson highlighted that the Biba conference was the busiest he could recall, an impression shared by Ray Vincent, managing director at Transactor, who remarked: "We are getting what you might call a second-generation of internet broker who knows what they want and is being more careful about where they buy it."

Vincent believed the conference proved this is an interesting time for insurance technology: "There is a lot of exciting stuff going on around personal lines, mostly to do with calling out to other databases during the quote process, whether it be credit checking or claims verification. Lots of insurers are very excited about the possibilities for integrating with other databases to clean up the data and get a more accurate picture of the risk they are taking on."

As well as insurers showing increasing interest in technology, according to Phil Ashton, sales director at SSP, brokers also proved that their technological knowledge was "far superior to what it was only a few years ago". He explained: "We've had a lot of interest in changing systems to meet today's business requirements from people with old systems that have not been updated for quite some time. Nowadays, people are seeing a lot of efficiency wins on new systems and technology."

In Ashton's view, since the last conference the tide has changed, particularly in SME. He concluded: "The efficiencies of doing small-package SME business through a single system with one point of entry and multiple insurers quoting is what a lot of people are interested in. It bodes well for the future."

Source: PB – June 2010