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Speaker1: [00:00:13] Hello and welcome to Insurance Business TV. I'm Danny Wood, news editor of Insurance Business Australia, and today I'm joined by Simon Pascoe, director of FDB Insurance Brokers based in Melbourne. Feedback Insurance Brokers won the best digital strategy category for brokerages at the 2021 Insurance Business Awards Australia held in November last year. Simon, thanks for joining us today and congratulations to you and your team for winning this award.

Speaker2: [00:00:40] Thanks, Tony.

Speaker1: [00:00:42] First up, Simon, why is this win important to you and your team?

Speaker2: [00:00:45] We you those strong competition from the other excellence award. So it was it was a real honor. Feedbacks put an enormous amount of time and energy, not to mention cost. So to get the award is confirmation that we're on the right track and encourages us to keep moving in in the same direction. It's fair to say that that staff along the journey were a bit unsure whether we're on the right track, so I think the award also just shows to them how far we've come,

Speaker1: [00:01:25] Despite perhaps reservations from your staff. I mean, you've thought this through quite a lot. You describe your digital strategy as twofold. Can you tell us more about that?

Speaker2: [00:01:36] Yeah, first, we focus on customer education, and in the second part of that strategy is ease of use through automation. So in respect to the customer education, we started by filming 22 videos that were designed to answer frequently and consistently ask questions. And a lot of those questions are around professional indemnity as well as public liability. So in conjunction with producing those videos, they are also supported by blogs on our website. And by utilizing digital channels such as LinkedIn. We promoted those videos, which then drives traffic to our website, our website, it has quoting tools that allows our customers or potential customers to get instant online quotes. Um, we we have a range of different products on those online calculators, including professional indemnity, public liability, cyber management liability, etc.. I think gone are the days where you send a long winded proposal form to a client and expect them to fill it out and come back to you. So we've part of our strategy was to focus on some customer frustrations around proposal forms and and transition that to an online form where where people can get the instant quotes. I think customers too are trending towards jumping online and getting quotes at a time that that suits them, not just in the traditional nine to five business hours. And lastly, focusing on technology, it allows us to spend less time on administration and more time actually servicing our clients.

Speaker1: [00:03:48] You impress the judges with this approach, but particularly they liked your YouTube videos. Can you talk about the inspiration behind those videos and how you went about producing that?

Speaker2: [00:03:59] From everything I'm hearing and saying that the trends are showing that video is is the future rather than static text? Simple, easy to understand information that in a format that requires little effort, I think, particularly the younger generation is where they're heading. I have read that that 95 per cent of the message is retained through video as opposed to to reading. So that's why we went down that path. And and the key when we were producing the video is to keep each one under a minute any longer than that and you run the risk of just losing them.

Speaker1: [00:04:44] And how were you actually making them for the middle aged brokers of my sort of vintage? Are you just holding up a camera and recording them? Or did you have quite high tech equipment?

Speaker2: [00:04:54] No, we actually threw out a digital guy who who built our websites and helped with our online calculator. He also has a film background. So we we hired a studio and and had Sally Williams, who is from the old brand brand power ads. And she she wrote the scripts and she did the filming.

Speaker1: [00:05:23] The other thing that impressed about the videos was how they focus very heavily on education. What was the thought process behind that?

Speaker2: [00:05:32] I think that that customers don't want to be sold to, they, you know, they rather feel like they can build trust from from a broker rather than feel like they're being sold to so. So that was the reason behind educating. And we've also noticed that customers looking for insurance, they want to do their research first. So don't just launch straight into purchasing a product, they want to understand. They want to go to potentially different brokers or websites. So the more we can educate a client, the stronger the trust we can build with them. It's also fair to say that we a lot of our products online relate to professional indemnity, public liability for sole traders or freelancers, and it's fair to say that a lot of them don't really understand what insurance they need or what it covers. So I feel as a broker, we have an obligation to educate them and make sure that they're purchasing a product that is most suitable for their their needs. And I think it's fair to say that the more educated a client, the less likely that we'll will have problems down the track.

Speaker1: [00:06:52] And what sort of feedback have you had on these videos and how are you tracking the feedback?

Speaker2: [00:06:57] The feedback really is in the numbers, the amount of views and click through on our videos and the amount of traffic traffic to our website is is building consistently and new business for for feedback is at an all time high. And conversions are also at an all time high. So it really the proof is in the pudding and the numbers. The numbers reflect that.

Speaker1: [00:07:28] And lastly, what message would you have for other brokerages thinking of doing a digital strategy along the line of yours? What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome?

Speaker2: [00:07:38] Well, there's no shortcuts. We we really were about 12 months into it before we started to get traction and see the results. It's certainly not something that you can do for for six months and and expect it to have huge results or do 12 months worth of work and expect it to have lasting results. You must consistently create content on an ongoing basis, and it's something that you just keep you need to keep building on.

Speaker1: [00:08:15] So how often are you rolling out the videos then? Is this something you're sitting down and plotting every week?

Speaker2: [00:08:20] Not so much. The videos we filmed 22 of those in one hit, and then we're rolling those out each week. So we did them a while ago, but we've slowly release them on different social media platforms, whether it's Facebook, LinkedIn. So we'll start to look at rolling out a new some new videos. We'll start that process within the next month or two.

Speaker1: [00:08:49] Well, congratulations again, Simon, and thanks for joining us.

Speaker2: [00:08:53] Thanks, Daddy. Appreciate it.

Speaker1: [00:08:55] And that's Simon Pascoe, director of Feedback Insurance Brokers in Melbourne, and his firm won Best Digital Strategy category for brokerages at the 2021 Insurance Business Awards Australia. Thanks for watching.

[00:09:09] Bye for now.