One-fifth of High Street Underwriting Agency’s roster is its tech team, and here chief executive Blair Whittle (pictured above) shares why he believes having a big in-house unit focused on technology isn’t a financial burden but, in fact, is a significant investment for the Lloyd’s coverholder.
“One of our specialties is dealing with volume business or the smaller premiums,” Whittle told Insurance Business. “A lot of the [underwriting for that] can be automated, and that’s what Andrew and his team do – they automate a lot of the process.”
The CEO was referring to High Street chief technology officer Andrew Martin (pictured below), who Whittle credited as being the brains behind the company’s online platform.
“Andrew’s been a big part of making sure that the portal works from an audit perspective and that it’s all in compliance with ASIC (Australian Securities & Investments Commission) regulations,” noted the High Street boss, who added that they have already provisioned for the upcoming reforms and have built systems to go live to cater for the changes.
“He has a very good grasp of insurance. He knows about our compliance regulations with our Lloyd’s capacity holders as much as – and sometimes more than – some of the underwriters.”
For High Street, it’s important that the Queensland agency’s internal eight-man tech team understands what the business is all about.
When Insurance Business sat down with the CTO, Martin said: “The hardest thing about the tech is you need to know the insurance as well. When we get new people onboard, making sure they can code well is only a small part of it. It’s a long-term learning experience so we ‘get’ the insurance that we’re having to write tech for.
“The more we rely on the tech side of things, the more it’s kind of up to the tech team to make sure that everything is compliant and everything goes by the guidelines. It’s not really a person who is at fault anymore if something’s wrong; it’s the technology. So, we really have to understand that, just to make sure that nothing goes wrong – or if it does go wrong, that we can get on top of it as quickly as possible and sort it out.”
Martin also believes that, usually, when a business is not as invested tech-wise, there may be one or two tech people who are there just to maintain what’s already in place.
He asserted: “At High Street, we’re always trying to push the boundary and evolve and grow in more ways. I think that’s really what the big difference is. Blair has that vision of progress, as opposed to being steady. Ultimately, if that’s your business plan – just to maintain what you have – you are going to be out of date, especially in tech.”
Meanwhile, Whittle went on to state: “We’ve got seven developers working underneath Andrew who are constantly maintaining the portal and thinking of improvements and things like that. This is the whole point of building it completely in-house from scratch, is so we can customise it and change it whenever we like.
“There are so many opportunities that come through, e.g., automation, which is what we’re trying to capitalise on. [The team] is a significant investment and it’s not a financial burden. The business we win on the back of our tech team more than makes up for it.”
