2024 is off to the races! But what’s top of the agenda for businesses across the insurance market as they embrace the clean slate represented by the next 12 months?
Growth is the name of the game for the insurance law firm HF as it faces into 2024, according to managing partner and CEO Ronan McCann. Sustainable, profitable growth is at the top of his wish list for the year, he said, with all the numerous elements that underpin that. The team will be focusing on delivering, “such a great service to our customers that they want to do even more work with us”.
“We’d like that work to include our increasing lines of business as we consolidate our position as a full service law firm,” he said. “That diversification and bringing on board new teams also gives us the opportunity to introduce our full range of services to clients who currently are only aware of a particular area of expertise.
“We’re not looking to grow for growth’s sake though, we’re focused on keeping control of our costs and excited to make maximum use of technology, including AI, to keep us at the leading edge of innovation in our market.”
For Jon Walker, CEO at AXA Commercial, the agenda for 2024 is already stacked. Looking back to 2023, he noted that the year got off to a busy start, with the industry faced with delivering changes relating to the introduction of Consumer Duty while navigating a great deal of economic and financial uncertainty across the UK impacting businesses.
Walker also highlighted that while Consumer Duty is now being fully embedded across the AXA Commercial business and more generally driving the sector in the right direction with more focus on fair customer outcomes, there seems limited chance of financial and economic stability fully returning for customers in the coming months.
“However, there is still cause for optimism,” he said. “Market pricing is helping to address unprecedented claims inflation, ensuring collective sector capacity can continue into 2024. Broker M&A activity will continue and mature resulting in a greater focus on customers, integration and culture, driving improved outcomes for customers and newly acquired colleagues.
“Next year I expect to see more broker and insurer consolidation, with new MGAs and entrants to the market. New business models and an increased use of data will create more competition, further raising the bar on service and proposition development and delivery.”
Also touching on the external conditions impacting the market going into 2024 was John Pickersgill, group chief commercial officer at Charles Taylor. Sharing his insights with Insurance Business, he pinpointed the well-publicised challenges facing the global risk management and insurance industry.
For Pickersgill, the three that resonate most include:
Talent is certainly on the mind of Karl Hennessy, CEO of McGill Global Risk Solutions LLC. He noted that years of soft market conditions, industrialisation of placing processes rather than investing in broker expertise and focus on reducing costs and expanding margin – “and we all know 80% of brokers costs is people” – have led to a shortage in good market practitioners.
Risk is also pressing on his agenda. Secondary perils are no longer a secondary consideration. Hennessy said, and whilst property pricing has corrected and stabilised the impact of climate change will likely continue and will no doubt lead to a review as to how risk is modelled.
New product development is taking priority for managing director Rich Tomlinson and his team at the insurance data provider Percayso Inform. The business has learned a lot about the motor vehicle intelligence area since its acquisition of Cazana and the creation of Percayso Vehicle Intelligence at the beginning of 2023, he said, which resulted in a long road map of areas to develop.
“I’ve got a dedicated team coming up with new modules to launch over the next 12 months,” he said. “We’re also looking to roll out our Quote Intelligence suite more widely to get deeper into developing new solutions when it comes to policy and claims intelligence, so there’s another team focused on that.
“All that product development doesn’t mean that we’re taking our eye off the ball when it comes to our core platform. We are hugely proud of our 100% uptime and as we take on more new business and handle more transactions, we want our customers to be confident that they won’t experience any downtime or outages. That’s another major area of focus for us in 2024.”
