How has InShared lowered the acquisition costs by fully automating the underwriting process
Customer
InShared
Challenge
How do you build a profitable portfolio in setting up a 100% internet insurer?
Solution
FRISS Underwriting Analytics
FRISS Claims Analytics
FRISS investigations
Results
Lowered the acquisition costs
Optimized pricing
Fully on target claims ratio
Customer
InShared is an Achmea initiative. Achmea is the largest indemnity insurer in the Netherlands with such well-known labels as Centraal Beheer, Interpolis and FBTO. InShared was established with several reasons in mind:
• Internet is becoming an increasingly important sales channel for insurance;
• Consumer behavior is changing;
• Consumers do not purchase an insurance policy based on confidence;
• Consumers do not always understand the risks of their behavior;
• Indemnity insurance is becoming a commodity/comparable product;
• Insurers should put the interests of the consumer first;
• Cost leadership and high customer satisfaction can be obtained.
The insurance product was redesigned based on these principles. The InShared concept is unique and has consequently won several innovation awards. “We all benefit” is a slogan that clearly indicates that having a healthy portfolio is a joint responsibility (“We bear the risks together, as a group of clients. The better we do this, the more money you get back at the end of the insurance year”).
InShared believes that the joint prevention of unnecessary claims is just as important as the joint sharing of claims. That’s why InShared also shares the profit generated from this prevention. 80% of the premium is reserved for the payment of claims. The remaining amount is refunded to the customer. Customers receive a larger share if they do not claim and have done more on prevention.
The organization and processes are simple and are completely internet based. There is no call center, but customers have a digital policy folder where they can customize everything and can also submit claims. Additionally, InShared is a combined effort, but has gathered a network of partners that contribute to high quality, flexibility and low costs. All this leads to an efficient organization that operates at substantially lower costs and shares the common goal of prevention and management of incurred claims.
Challenge
InShared was put on the market as a new initiative. A major marketing effort was undertaken and prizes were won! The concept has generated a lot of attention, which resulted in a significant increase of new customers, gained via the relative anonymity of the internet. These are mostly customers attracted to the concept (“We are not here for the reckless people”). But there are also people who do not have such good intentions. At first bad risks had a major impact on the combined ratio of small portfolios and on the validity of the concept. The key focus for InShared was to obtain the highest customer satisfaction, but at the same time work for the lowest costs. In short: “How do you build a profitable portfolio in setting up a 100% internet insurer?”
Solution
The management of InShared was aware of this challenge. That is also why, from the first day that InShared was operational, the FRISS solution handled the actual acceptance of new customers.
This means that a real-time check of the customer’s risk occurs at the moment that this customer wishes to purchase an insurance policy with InShared via the internet. This risk is determined using indicators such as the person’s conduct, payment risk and claim risk. The estimation of this risk ultimately determines whether, and under what conditions, the customer is accepted.
The risk is estimated by a combination of applied knowledge rules, external data sources and on FRISS developed custom profiles. Associated external data sources are, amongst others, FISH, RDW, Chamber of Commerce, FRISS Credit Check, Cendris and CIR.
The data from these sources is interpreted by FRISS software using more than 80 characteristics, specially tuned for each application. A general set of rules can be used (the FRISS master set), which contribute to the actual underwriting. Underwriting is the most important process for a start-up insurer. After a while, the FRISS solution was also used to check the claims. This determines, in a comparable manner to underwriting, what risks may be linked to a new claim.
The FRISS solutions are offered as Software as a Service (SaaS). This resulted in an implementation within two months and there were no major internal adjustments needed from InShared.