TV

Paul Lucas  08:58:58 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest edition of Insurance Business TV brought to you in association with Davies. In this special edition, we're going to look at ways you can digitize your business to better customer outcomes and to achieve consumer duty success. We caught up with Davies business development director Neil Strickland to examine what insurance companies need to get right before replacing the old systems and how they can go about achieving the best customer outcomes. Let's take a look at that exclusive interview with Davies Neil Strickland now. 

Neil Strickland  08:59:38 

I think probably the first question to answer is actually is replacing the technology the key thing? Is it right for the business at that time, too many organizations jumped straight to the place without considering actually modernizing legacy technology is very, very good and successful. digital businesses can be built on legacy technology. So important things to think about know when actually doing that is having a modernization plan. Think about steps, trading that road roadmap, it trades less strain on the business. And you can deliver no quicker when you do when you do look to replace or modernize key thing is have a roadmap, think about three, five years time, don't just think I'm going to do this and it's all over. I think also think around the work workforce as well, you've got to have an amicable rate and resourcing they've got to be skilled to actually deliver it because majority of transformations in excess of a 80% Fail will get slowed down because of lack of resource or in other quality of resource. So there's a lot to consider there, I think but the key message is probably don't jump straight to replace. Think about modernization of legacy systems, integrated data, getting that in together as an option first. 

Neil Strickland  09:01:14 

That is such a big, the big topic. As you can appreciate, I think the important thing to realize is consumer duty was the onus on the firm the insurer or the broker to understand and deliver on its outcomes in so many customers throughout its entire value chain. So not just their own firm, but actually those outsourced entities that provide services for them as well. So that extends into third party administrators shared services, this sort of thing. This is further compounded by the fact that the PRA and the SCA have established establish that operational resilience needs to be mapped throughout that value chain as well, by March 2025, they made it very, very clear that the firm owns that relationship that they need to be accountable for that relationship. So probably two quick tips are what the firm should be doing is clearly be engaging with those service partners early establish what the the data requirements they have are because very often that service provider will have to change their processes in order to accommodate that and actually change their data capture needs as well. And and again, I come back to the resourcing create your implementation plan in a flexible manner but with the resource in to actually support it as well. Because all of this work in a whilst consumer duties June in in two months time. And operational resilience is in a year, year and a half halfway, it won't stop there, you've got to continue to look longer term and your fans evolve that and consumer needs change as well. So the key message is build a flexible implementation plan that can adjust as customer needs change, and regulatory requirements change as well. 

Neil Strickland  09:03:13 

Firms have to embrace the fact that you know this is customer outcomes and needs to be at the heart of their business. delivering them and monitor them has to be at the heart and that's really driven by two things. One would be cult culture, and one one would be data. So going into culture of x more that needs to be embedded across the organization. The customer needs to come first in every decision that that organization takes on products and service. So the very important thing is that it's the responsibility of all staff, not just the appointed executive. So all soft knee need to embrace this. Another thing on culture is, again, the work of workforce, it needs to be established both from a top down and the bottom up approach, you should expect the top down creating the tone and the language and the approach, but very much supported by the the training, delivered a whole all levels throughout the organization, every role will ever response responsibility all levels. But the very, very important thing is to evidence the training fine, but actually evidence understanding and implementation. So you can really demonstrate that your staff understand their response possibilities and are delivering those outcome was that the, you know, the organization requires. So going into data, data is a huge, a huge requirement of of customer, you know, our, our machine needs to be able to evidence. So we've got to create your data suite, your reporting tools very early on understanding what you're looking to measure, don't fall into the trap of measuring everything you don't need need to measure what matters, which is customer outcomes, again, consistent messages, customer outcomes. That's from both a customer lens, an employee lens, and also a value lens as well. So bring that into your considerations. Another point would be regulatory tools, Reg tech tools because the reg regulation is so complex and is continuing to grow. The sheer data requirement to actually monitor compliance is again only increasing. So regulatory tools are a great way to actually monitoring evidence and your compliance and our outcomes. And surprisingly, reg tech tools are ready, relatively efficient, relatively cost efficient, but actually they bring benefits of savings and also being in increased compliance as well. But surprisingly, their uptake is not in line with the increase in regulation of presence. So I'd really encourage people to relook at reg tech tools, definitely. And again, the last point on data would be that scenario testing is absolutely critical. So understand how the organization will work and responds. The way way to do that, again, is bring the customer first consider the your activities, consider your products, consider your communications with the customer at the heart of that, how will they receive this information? How will they respond? How will they view it? So, scenario testing is absolutely critical, but it's very, very difficult. So I think no key message on this is culture and beta are actually at the heart of achieving and evidence in good customer outcomes.