“Fixing insurance for good.” The task that the Reigate-headquartered insurer esure has set itself might seem a disproportionately weighty one upon a first read but as highlighted by the firm’s head of motor engineering and network repair services Richard Hughes, this is not some vague ambition but rather a substantiative objective.
Since esure welcomed its new management team, headed up by David McMillan, two years ago, the business has been focused on a revolutionary digital journey underpinned by four key pillars. These are - firstly, to become the leading digital insurer; secondly, to enhance its value by delivering better outcomes for customers; thirdly, to showcase an exceptional culture that is modern, collaborative and customer-obsessed; and fourthly, to be a greener and safer organisation.
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It is the sustainability theme that has been Hughes’ focus in recent years as he has been working on esure’s Green Parts contract with the integrated salvage and vehicle recycling company SYNETIQ since 2019. When he first met with SYNETIQ in late 2019, it was with the idea of creating a sustainable green parts solution for the motor industry vehicle repair sector. esure has strong and collaborative relationships with about 100 body shops across its vehicle repair network, he said, and so rolled out this solution with those partners and its customers front of mind.
“When we looked into [this partnership], there were a number of areas that we wanted to deliver on,” he said. “First of all, the quality of the parts needed to be paramount so there were no quality issues for the body shop industry to worry about. SYNETIQ developed a grading system for their parts, which ensures that they will only supply category A or B parts into our network, which really ensures that high quality.
“Secondly, we wanted this to be sustainable for everybody. For our repairers to buy into it, there had to be a profit margin to make it worth their while, so we let them keep all of the profit margins on those parts. esure does not take any rebates or discounts from SYNETIQ because, for us, it’s all about sustainability. Of course, it also needed to be sustainable for SYNETIQ to make enough money on those parts to be able to deliver across the UK. That was another key requirement – that we wanted a UK-wide distribution network to ensure SYNETIQ could deliver recycled parts, green parts in the same sort of service level timeline that an original part would be delivered.”
Now, just over two years later, that SYNETIQ pilot has been a remarkable success which has ticked each of those boxes to the satisfaction of not just esure’s supply chain, but also its customers. Hughes highlighted that the insurer’s team has derived a lot of learnings from this success and has become market leaders when it comes to Green Parts. Last year alone, it fitted over 3,300 green parts, saving over 73,000 kilogrammes of CO2. Considering that some of those parts may have gone into landfills or been otherwise destroyed, this initiative has really proved the “green loop” possible between insurance and getting customers back on to the road.
Rather than proving a deterrent, COVID-19 was actually a great time to roll out the pilot considering that amid the shortage in parts and the closing of main dealers, esure had a steady and reliable supply chain in place and was able to keep its body shops moving. This ensured that customers continued to have their cars repaired during a tumultuous time, which has been of particular benefit for NHS and other health workers.
The ‘Green Agenda’ has picked up significant momentum during COVID not just across the UK but across the entire globe and Hughes is proud that the esure team was ahead of the curve when it came to promoting that agenda and cleaner, greener, safer driving. He emphasised the role of McMillan in directing that focus and the opportunity the insurer has to be a driving force in ongoing sustainability conversations.
There’s so much change going on at the moment, Hughes said, but he relishes the chance his role offers to spend his time developing collaborative solutions like the Green Parts initiative, among other sustainability drives. Given the reception this sustainability push has had in recent years, going into 2022, esure is set to use that success as a platform to propel further improvements and see how it can continue to embed the Green Parts initiatives across its repair network.
“I think the great thing about this is that we’re able to collaborate with the salvage industry, the body shop industry and also to share our successes with our peer group across the insurance sector because it’s something we want to promote as everybody benefits from this,” he said. “And we have great partners. Working on the supply chain side myself, we always adopt a very collaborative approach, and we have to bring our partners along with us on that journey, and develop our visions together and set ourselves goals and objectives to achieve.”
esure has gone to its body shop partners with the message that it wants them to travel together on a journey towards net-zero, Hughes said. The first stage of that will be achieving carbon neutral status. The firm has some partners which have already developed their own plans to achieve net zero in line with the Paris Agreement timelines but it’s also engaging with a lot of new suppliers to guide along that journey.
Delivering a message to esure’s partners on its Green Parts journey to date, Hughes stated, “We couldn’t have done this without them. The real passion and desire from SYNETIQ and our body shops to collaborate with us and make this work and make it a success was really critical. We’ve had them engaged and on board to help us develop every step of this process right up to contract signature in order to make this work. So, a big thank you to them all.”
