The Community Broker Network, formed following the merger between NAS, Westcourt and the
CGU AR network, will look to utilise intimate relationships with clients as its competitive advantage, its MD has said.
Paul Ayton, managing director of the now combined network, said that while much of the hard work has been done in combining the networks, there is still more work in the pipeline.
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“We need to be curious and really focused on constantly challenging ourselves,” Ayton told Insurance Business. “It is not like we have transitioned the CGU ARs and now we rest. It is an ongoing, evolving process to make sure we are curious and continuing to strive to be the best version of ourselves we can be as a network.”
Ayton said that the firm had taken its time to decide on the purpose of the business before unveiling its new moniker at its inaugural conference held in Darwin earlier this year.
The network decided on four pillars as the foundation of its business – customer guided, shared value/equity, continuous development and intimacy at scale – and Ayton said that the firm has been able to identify its competitive advantage as being its intimate relationships with clients.
“Regardless of where the authorised broker has come from and which part, whether they be a NAS, Westcourt or CGU AR, the key thing we all have in common and the key advantage we have is this trusted relationship with customers,” Ayton continued. “That is what sets us apart and is our competitive advantage, that we understand that value.”
With the first hurdles for the combined business now passed, Ayton said that the firm will look to continue its growth over both the short and long term.
“We have still got a lot of work to go on getting the network as lean and mean as we can and building its efficiency and effectiveness,” Ayton continued. “We think that we are probably as inefficient as we are ever going to be at the moment and we understand that there is so much friction cost in the industry and we have a great opportunity to streamline processes with ourselves and how we interact with other players in the space.”
Going forward, Ayton highlighted better use of data and technology as an area of focus for the business in the future.
“We have got some really rich and variable data but it is quite dispersed among different systems,” he explained. “We have not been able to leverage the insights from that data that we should. We are really trying to focus on how we bring some of that together.”
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