What’s in a name? It’s a familiar question but no less relevant for that and, according to Justin Gott (pictured), founder and MD of the newly established MGA Hoxton Insurance Services, the answer is simple - really quite a lot. The name illustrates the very DNA of the firm, he said, and the unique place it is aspiring to occupy in the insurance ecosystem.
“Hoxton is there on the outskirts of the City of London, a tech hub full of really interesting and innovative businesses,” he said. “So, it’s both a part of and apart from the City, as are we. We are part of the amazing, world-leading financial institution that is the City of London but we’re also separate to it, bringing in this more innovative, more entrepreneurial kind of spirit to an industry that can be quite traditional.”
It has been a rewarding if hectic time building up the firm and getting it ready to hit the market, Gott said, and the process has given him insight into what it means to be an entrepreneur setting up a new business. From the outside looking in, people can see what you’ve created, he said, but not necessarily the time and the effort that has gone into making it to launch day.
“One of the biggest challenges for people launching a new business is to say ‘we’re ready’, because nothing’s ever 100% perfect,” he said. “Everybody tells you it’s going to be really hard work… so you’re prepared for that, but you’re not so prepared for that moment of ‘crikey, I think we’re ready to go’. So, it has certainly been an interesting few weeks as we’ve approached our go-live date.”
The technological support provided by NuVenture International Ltd has been an instrumental part of what will help Hoxton Insurance Services offer a unique value proposition to the mid- and high-net-worth personal lines insurance space. Throughout his career to date, which includes 17 years serving with Hiscox’s high net worth division, Gott has seen for himself the challenges that the sector faces and the need for more innovative and nimble businesses to partner with traditional insurers to help them evolve how they interact with their intermediaries and customers.
“What we’re trying to be is a one-stop-shop for all of our clients’ personal lines insurance needs,” he said. “And in order to do that, what we recognised was that we had to have a very comprehensive product, [one] that combines all of the personal insurances that our clients might want to buy, and packages them up in an easy to understand portfolio.
“We also recognised what our brokers are very good at, which is brilliant customer service and helping our customers to get the best insurance possible. So, we wanted to find ways to allow our brokers to do more of that, by removing some of the administrative burden that brokers face – from the processes they have to go through to get a quote, to the challenges they face in dealing with multiple insurers for multiple products.”
This led to the development of Hoxton Insurance Services’ web-based trading platform, which allows brokers to quote business, bind business, access documentation that’s automatically generated in the system, do mid-term adjustments for their clients and facilitate client payments. It has a very light-touch annual review process, he said, and draws in huge amounts of data which allows a lot of the underwriting process to be automated. In addition, the platform is fully mobile optimised so the brokers can transact business from anywhere.
“And from talking to brokers, I’ve found that what that really allows them to do is to focus more on the most important thing, which is serving and servicing the needs of their customers,” he said. “So, what we’re looking to do is to harness the stability and security of the traditional insurance business, the current move towards more automation and digitisation of processes, and the fantastic service of the professional insurance broker – and then package all of that up into one holistic proposition.”
It might seem a grand ambition but it is one that Gott and his team are approaching with careful, systematic steps and the overriding plan for the MGA’s first year of operations is simple – “deliver on our promises.” These promises are threefold, he said, firstly to deliver on the business plan that the firm’s investors and insurance backers have signed up to. Secondly, to make sure its tech platform works really well and is actually making brokers’ lives easier. Thirdly, but most crucially, Hoxton Insurance Services wants to pay its customers’ claims brilliantly.
“If we can do those three simple things in our first year, then that’s massive success,” he said. “I think that people often over-complicate these things. But if we can remember [these core principles], we can achieve them and if we can achieve them, we’ve been successful. And in the longer term, it’s more of the same – keep delivering the numbers, keep evolving the tech and the products, but most importantly keep responding to what our clients and our brokers are telling us they want.”
Overall, he said, he would love Hoxton Insurance Services to be the market-leading proposition for intermediated, personal lines insurance. This goes beyond simply being the market-leading platform or offering market-leading products, and instead combines all those facets with the ambition of creating a simple, accessible, time-saving solution for brokers and clients alike.
“If that works, the clients are going to benefit, the brokers are going to benefit and our competitors are going to say ‘right, we need to pull our socks up, we need to improve and we need to innovate to the benefit of our customers’,” he said. “And then everybody wins because the industry as a whole gets better and that can only benefit the end consumer. So, it’s a simple plan, with simple deliverables. The complexity is just doing it, and now we’re well on our way.”
