Polaris’s imarket hits new high with £322m premium in 2022

This was a 1.7% increase for the UK insurance industry owned organisation dedicated to support the growth of digital trading.

Premium from imarket’s policies jumped even more increasing 15% year-on-year to £322m.

Managing director of Polaris, Vivek Banga, pictured, told Insurance Age the rise was a function of rate going through the market and digital trading being used for larger risks.

“It is a combination of both,” he explained. “The boundaries of digital trading are expanding consistently.

“If you tie that up with Live-Chat, the fact that a broker and underwriter can also have a secure conversation while trading through imarket also means slightly more complex risks can go through our online trading environment.”

Live-Chat

Use of Live-Chat, which allows brokers and underwriters to exchange extra information about a risk and keep it within digital placement platforms, was the fastest-growing service in 2022.

There were 237,000 chats last year across imarket and insurer extranets, a rise of 16% in the year.

“Live-Chat has been a fantastic example of how communication, and being able to talk and clarify details around risk, has blended really well with technology,” Banga said. “We are really pleased to see how brokers and insurers are embracing it.”

Polaris also announced that Arch Insurance has joined the imarket insurance panel and revealed that an infrastructure upgrade to imarket will be implemented transforming it into a cloud-native application.

Machine learning

Polaris’ rating engine, Product Writer, ended the year with its highest ever number of users at 82, up from 80 at the end of 2021. The technology provider committed to promoting machine learning and expanding third party data enrichment capabilities.

Banga commented that Polaris first started seeing clients using variants of machine learning in 2021 and had been evolving Product Writer to keep pace.

“What we have done is since they use Product Writer to then distribute their product into the market, and as their main rating engine, we are working with those clients one-on-one to make sure Product Writer as a rating engine can support their machine learning algorithms,” he explained.

Data enrichment

With machine learning a growing area in the industry, he continued: “What we are saying to our clients, go ahead, we will work with you.”

Adding: “Given that Polaris is a small company it is a considerable spend from our side.”

And he stressed that data enrichment remained a focus area with clients connecting to new sources.

“A bit like machine learning our message to clients is if you are looking at any data enrichment capability just let us know and we will connect Product Writer to it,” he confirmed. “That is something we do as par for the course.”

Standards

The number of firms subscribing to Standards, a shared industry language that facilitates communications between different systems and parts of the distribution chain, dropped to 105 from 112 the year before.

Polaris explained this was due to industry consolidation.

Banga noted that alongside changes to existing standards, Polaris brought out one new standard in 2022 for motorhome business.

Growth

According to Polaris, on a rolling 12-month basis it broke through the 500,000 policies barrier in January this year.

Forecasting further growth Banga highlighted that he was pleased with the “strong” level of industry commitment to Polaris pinpointing that across its advisory boards it had more than 1000 hours of industry engagement.

“That industry contribution makes us the unique service provider,” he said.

Concluding: “We are industry owned with a very specific remit. Our numbers show how widely used we are. If you are at any stage in your digital journey just talk to us. We have an industry view and can help.”

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