Allianz to help brokers with underinsurance concerns

Describing the year as ‘challenging’, Bryant told Insurance Age that Allianz was educating brokers on how to support clients during the cost of living crisis and ensuring that clients are not underinsured.

The insurer is also encouraging brokers to use a tool on its e-trading system when evaluating customers.

She said: “Brokers were asking us at a broker forum earlier this week whether they could receive any additional support around assisting SMEs and businesses with appropriate valuations.

“Within Allianz, through our risk management services, we offer discounted surveys for our customers who take out policies with us. It is about helping brokers understand what we see from the risk and sharing some data with them.”

We offer discounted surveys for our customers who take out policies with us. It is about helping brokers understand what we see from the risk.

Bryant added that their e-trading platform QuoteSME flags to brokers if the quote they have provided is at risk of significant underinsurance.

“Our role as an insurer is the education where we can share data and listen to see if there are solutions we can help provide,” she said.

Digital trading

Speaking more broadly about Allianz’s e-trading capabilities, Bryant said the insurer made a multimillion-pound investment into its digital trading division over the past couple of years.

She said: “The investment was for transforming our business and there have been many component parts to that. But a key element of it has been about making sure we can offer the most seamless and straightforward digital solutions for our brokers and customers.

“We want to underpin our live chat capabilities and have invested in an artificial intelligence chatbot as well as data mining. The idea behind it all is to make sure that we can make the journey for brokers as easy as possible, so that we can take out any friction and barriers for brokers.”

Bryant also stressed that the investment is to make the insurer more competitive by freeing up its brokers’ time.

The SME population is predominantly trading digitally and it is a growing part of the UK industry, Bryant said.

She added: “The SME side of things is an important business area for brokers, and it is in [the] high volume [space], so you have to find ways to be able to transact that effectively and still provide the customer with the right products and confidence that they need.

“That’s what digital solutions bring, and hence the investment in it, because we need to get the insurance transacted quickly. We have platforms [in which] brokers can effectively manage the entire lifecycle of their customer whatever the environment, so they don’t have to wait on the phone to speak to us.”

Continuation of transformation

In the next year, Bryant would like to continue with Allianz’s digital transformation and has new launches in the pipeline.

She said: “We are actively working on some new products but they’re not quote ready yet. I won’t say what they are, but I’d be expecting that before the year end that we will hopefully have launched new digital products to the market.

“We are going to continue our digital journey, building on the investments that we have been making with more to come. We really want to make sure we remove any barriers, that we take unnecessary referrals out of our system where they are not required.”

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