“That's where the magic happens,” said Michael Storozhev (pictured above).
He was describing a hypothetical travel claim situation where an injured customer needs to pay a medical bill of $1,000.
“We've got predictive analytics in place to be able to estimate that $1,000 before you even step foot into the doctor's surgery,” said Storozhev, chief underwriter for PassportCard Australia, part of international travel insurer PassportCard Group.
Using what his firm describes as a “global first” technology, customers are given a physical debit card that they present to pay travel claim bills automatically without the need for any paperwork.
“When you go to pay, you don't have the situation where you need to call the insurance company to say, ‘I've got my bill, it's $1,000, can you put that money on there?’” He said. “If that’s the experience then you might as well just pay for it yourself and get reimbursed.”
This PassportCard offering is for single-trip, leisure travellers who are not traditionally a priority market for insurance brokers. However, Storozhev suggested that more brokers are now looking for opportunities to also sell leisure travel policies.
“Right now we've got over 700 different brokerages that are able to use our travel insurance solution,” he said. “When it comes to travel insurance, we've always felt that Australian brokers are underserved from that [leisure travel] product space.”
Storozhev said this market gap was his firm’s starting point in Australia.
“Brokers came to us saying that this was something that they wanted access to first up,” he said. “We wanted to give brokers the ability, where they do see gaps in the corporate travel insurance offering, to be able to offer a leisure, personal trip, travel insurance as well.”
His firm’s relationships with brokers, said Storozhev, are a key foundation of the business.
“When we launched mid last year, our first policies were sold by brokers,” he said. “We've got a unique broker portal that our brokers have access to where they can either provide a lead, that we can then have someone contact from our team, or the broker can go in and do all the quote process, together with the client in their office.”
He said brokers can call his travel team for advice when a unique situation comes up.
“Everyone's trips are unique, whether it's doing a particular activity, or going on a once in a lifetime trip worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of flights and accommodation,” said Storozhev.
So what sorts of customers are brokers selling leisure travel coverages to?
“It's usually customers that already have a relationship with their broker,” said Storozhev.
He said these customers may already have a commercial insurance policy with the broker or even a home or motor policy.
“So it’s in the same spirit – they want to have the additional confidence from the broker that insurance purchases are correct,” said Storozhev. “We've seen customers asking their brokers about retail travel insurance as well and so it was a natural step for us to provide the offering to brokers.”
The chief underwriter said broker opportunities in travel’s leisure sector were given a big boost by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Definitely since COVID more and more travellers want to ensure that they've got the right product for their needs,” said Storozhev. “COVID showed just how complex travel insurance really is.”
He said one example was the number of insurance customers who were surprised by what coverage they did or didn't have when the pandemic hit.
“These questions were being asked in customer service but also by the brokers themselves,” said Storozhev. “If you've only got that relationship with a broker, the easiest way of getting that confidence and that trust is by asking the experts who you already have the relationship with.”
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), there were nearly 1.5 million international trips made by Australians in March, an annual increase of nearly half a million.
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