Huddle Insurance co-founders Jason Wilby and Jonathan Buck have launched a “disruptive digital insurance platform”, OpenBroker, to enable brokers and their clients to sell and manage insurance online.
Jason Wilby (pictured), co-founder of OpenBroker, said the first-of-its-kind product was launched with a focus on helping make insurance simple for consumers, insurers, brokers and intermediaries.
“We had seen lots of complexity in the way insurance is currently managed and believed the technology had a role to play in simplifying the business,” Wilby said.
“It’s a digital end-to-end customer experience unlike anything you can get from any of the majors in Australia, the US and the UK… We’ve solved a whole lot of problems by making personal lines both viable for brokers and also hopefully a more reliable experience for their clients as well, given that it’s very tricky to access things like self-service and manage their policies online when they’re with brokers.”
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The launch of OpenBroker has been facilitated by the wealth of knowledge Wilby picked up from launching his first B2C brand, Huddle Insurance, and seeing firsthand the multitude of issues facing the insurance sector.
“We initially launched with a B2C brand that enabled us to learn a heck of a lot about insurance and the problems that could be solved,” he explained. “We did that with Huddle and a lot of people have seen that grow over the last few years, it was a pretty incredible success.”
Wilby has also observed that consumers need help when purchasing insurance, with many commonly purchasing the wrong type of policy.
“You can put warnings all over the website and you can try everything you can to ensure the customers end up with the right product but, in actual fact, most people try to think about insurance as little as possible,” he explained.
Despite needing help, Wilby discovered that consumers were opting not to use brokers to help them find cover and instead preferred the convenience of online self-service.
“One of the insights we gained was that while people want the help from an insurance broker, they also want to be able to do things online – they want to be able to manage their policy online, submit their claims online, update their policy at 4am when they come off a nightshift for example,” he said.
“They were sort of faced with this dichotomy, it’s like ‘I can get advice from my broker, but I can’t manage my policy online’ or ‘I can buy my insurance online, but I can’t get advice from a broker’.”
Brokers also told Wilby that their clients are “crying out” for self-service and online experiences, which would reduce “the frustration” and workload for brokers as well as providing a positive experience for clientele.
“We’re making it possible for brokers to provide the best possible advice, but then for clients to access their policies and manage their policies and their claims online,” he said.
OpenBroker carries a monthly subscription-like fee, he explained.
“We do charge a small access fee to the broker for using the technologies… It varies a little bit. I think the best thing is for brokers to talk with our team and talk through their needs and we can tailor the implementation according to the broker and how much – not everybody uses the same modules for example,” Wilby admitted.
Wilby said the platform has “no set-up costs, no minimal fee and flexible pay-as-you-go pricing for premium features.”
“Since launching on June 29, OpenBroker has already onboarded five larger broker firms across New South Wales and Queensland, with many more in the pipeline,” he said.
