This article was produced in partnership with Cazoo Data Services
Mia Wallace, of Insurance Business, sat down with Kieran Fisher and Roly O’Neil, of Cazoo Data Services, to discuss what sets it value proposition apart.
It’s a pipedream for most businesses – to carve out a proposition that places you not just one step in front of any competition but leagues ahead, with little prospect of your peers catching up. The unique value proposition at the heart of Cazoo Data Services has evolved alongside the business itself which began as Cazana in 2013 - a B2C operation enabling people to understand the value and history of vehicles they were looking to buy.
What became clear as the business grew, according to account manager (insurance) Kieran Fisher (pictured above), was that its data was being accessed by people working at the UK’s top insurers which begged the question – what was Cazoo Data Services offering that these insurers couldn’t obtain elsewhere? The answer was its granular vehicle data which can
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Cazoo Data Service’s methodology for valuing vehicles is also unique, he said, which lends itself especially well to the insurance industry as it’s the same methodology customers use to appraise their own vehicles. This has resulted in the business building a universal language understood by every party across the insurance ecosystem – from industry players, to the end consumer, to the Financial Services Ombudsman.
The value proposition of Cazoo Data Services has been crafted from many years spent capturing online vehicle classified advertisements to obtain this unique information, noted strategic partnerships manager (insurance) Roly O’Neil (pictured below), making it essentially impossible for a competitor to emulate its offering. Its time in the market also offers it a long-term view of how the sector has changed – and what can be done to navigate shifting expectations and requirements when it comes to data.
Now the firm is facing a brave new world in which people are more willing than ever to explore how data can be used in increasingly innovative ways as many businesses have had the opportunity to invest time and resources in new projects and systems. Coupled with the regulatory changes around dual pricing, accurate valuations are rising to the fore more than ever as insurance businesses come under pressure at both new business and renewal stages.
“Market volatility is still on the tip of everyone’s tongues,” Fisher said. “And we’re incredibly fortunate that our whole methodology really lends itself to that market volatility because we’re doing things [essentially] live.”
Cazoo Data Services is coming of age at the right time and the right place, he said, as the world has become very data-heavy with people expecting information to be immediate and transparent. The methodology of using historical auction data that the consumer has no insight into and asking them to take your word on a valuation doesn’t hold up anymore. People want these valuations to be justified and backed up with hard evidence – and that’s where the firm has been able to carve out a unique niche.
“Having our methodology at the front of everything we do is not just helping the industry settle claims faster and more fairly, and to price policies more accurately… but also enabling that to transition through to understanding from the consumers’ point of view,” said Fisher. “Pricing that policy better at the outset and having a faster, fairer claim at the tail end of the process, and including the customer in that journey, is to the benefit of the end consumer.”
The advantages that a Cazoo Data Services partnership brings to the claims piece are widely recognised by its insurer partners and its customers, O’Neil said, as not only does it provide a fair price but it also backs up why that price stands where it does. But it’s a different story on the underwriting side of the proposition as previously businesses didn’t necessarily understand the value-add of accurate valuations and were content to stick with more traditional processes.
“But as we’ve progressed,” he said, “probably all of the top 30 insurance companies in the UK now have at least had a good look at our data. And all of them come back seeing some value in some part of our data, whether it’s our accurate valuations - or whether it’s using other points of interest as risk flags… So in the underwriting space, there are elements that we’ve got, that [our partners] didn’t know they wanted or even needed until they assessed it.”
That’s a change that has really accelerated in the last 12 months, O’Neil said, and it sets an interesting foundation for where Cazoo Data Services can go next. Without going into details on upcoming partnerships, he highlighted its strong existing relationships with renowned businesses – and the opportunities these partnerships bring for exciting new innovations.
“[The word partnership] is key there,” he said. “We do genuinely partner with these insurance businesses, we try not to be a supplier. And when we start partnering with these insurance companies, we take their feedback on board and make changes [in-line with that].
“We have made some changes to our own delivery, on how the data is served up as well as continually listening, learning and changing to ensure we are offering more efficient and streamlined resources. Because the chances are if one insurer wants it, the rest of them do too. So, it’s as beneficial for that partner as it is for us to be able to provide that to the [wider] industry.”
In addition, Fisher highlighted how lucky the business is to have its hands on so much vehicle-specific data and the opportunities for further innovation that this brings. The team at Cazoo Data Services is already doing some very clever things with that data, he said, but there’s always scope to do more. It’s to the credit of the way the company does business that it’s able to take both a reactive and proactive stance to transforming market changes into innovations.
“So, if a customer comes to us with a need, and we’ve got access to that data, we can start to develop new and exciting things to do with it,” he said. “We can take what is on the face of it quite simple data - like how many miles a car has through both MOT and advert data – and supplement that with our own internal data and then build models around predictions of future mileage. That’s just one example, but you can see how having access to so much data opens up the scope of being able to develop so many interesting products.”
For more information on Cazoo Data Services, contact Kieran Fisher account manager (insurance) or Roly O’Neil - strategic partnerships manager (insurance)
