Single source of the truth for accurate business funding decisions

The BIBA manifesto for 2023 is “Managing Risk – Delivering Stability”. And that’s exactly what we did on 26^th January 2023, when we brought together over 60 handpicked senior leaders and influencers to dive deep into two of the biggest challenges impacting brokers in 2023 - namely the hard market and underinsurance.

Now is the time to have the underinsurance discussion

Steve White, CEO of BIBA, led the discussion on underinsurance.

With inflation, the rising cost-of-living and cash flow difficulties, the war in Ukraine, energy prices, and high labour and materials costs, we’re currently in the eye of the perfect storm for significant underinsurance.

Aviva’s Risk Insights Report 2023 highlighted that two-thirds of UK business leaders (63%) are ‘worried’ about the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on their business, while 29% believe it will have a ‘serious’ impact on their business. It also pinpointed some startling figures about the impact, with a fifth of businesses (21%) having reduced or considered reducing their insurance cover in the last year. Half of UK business are now actually considered to be underinsured to some degree, and 40% of policies with buildings cover have at least one premises suspected to be underinsured.

These figures are backed up by CILA, whose recent research found that underinsurance is found in 40-50% of claims. Underinsurance in the commercial sector is also wide ranging, with Premium Credit Ltd reporting that 21% of businesses have stopped buying employer’s liability cover, 22% have cut back on professional indemnity, 21% on public liability, and 19% on business interruption insurance.

So, how can brokers rise to the challenge of tackling underinsurance?

The worst scenario for business owners is to get their first experience of underinsurance when they make a claim. The key to tackling underinsurance is to move from a reactive approach, to a proactive or ideally predictive one. Guests at the event were all in agreement that utilisation of data is the fastest and most accurate way to identify customers who are at risk of being underinsured.

Failure to tackle this issue will not only damage the viability of businesses, particularly SME’s, but also impact the future success of brokers themselves - let’s be honest, they aren’t having an easy time of it either.

Our event survey found that 24% of insurance leaders agree or strongly agree they are finding it harder to win new business, whilst 59% are finding it harder to retain existing clients.

The event certainly kickstarted an urgent discussion, one that is perhaps long overdue.

What about the hard market? Has it plateaued?

David Sparkes, Head of Compliance and Training at BIBA took over talk about the current hard market conditions facing brokers. He promised lots of facts and figures, and he didn’t disappoint.

According to Marsh’s Global Insurance Market Index, for the third quarter 2022 property insurance pricing increased 6% year on year, and casualty pricing increased 4%. Rates remained competitive for EL and PL. Financial and professional lines pricing have flattened out, and cyber pricing increased 66% year-on-year in Q3, down from 102% in Q2.

So, the evidence might suggest that the hard market is plateauing. But David urged that we should not be too hasty to jump to this conclusion.

The December 2022 Reinsurance renewal programme highlighted that the 5-year moving average for 2022 was the second largest on record, thanks to a rise in perils and macro trends including inflation, high interest rates, heightened investment risks, climate and ESG, shareholder pressure and underinsurance.

David’s assertion that we shouldn’t speak to soon when it comes to the continued impact of the hard market was reinforced by the insurance leaders attending the event. 34% agreed that the hard market is having the biggest impact on their future plans, whilst 36% also said it is the biggest challenge to their growth aspirations.

Despite the challenges brokers can be confident of a brighter outlook for 2023

Not because these issues are going to disappear, but because brokers are ready to tackle them head on.

82% of respondents to our survey agreed or strongly agreed they are putting in place steps to combat such challenges, along with others including regulation, Brexit, the talent shortage, and the ongoing fallout from the global pandemic.

The discussion doesn’t end here

At FullCircl we love to listen, and we love to chat. Join the discussion or find out how we can help you harness data to tackle the biggest challenges impacting your organisation this year.

Or why not join us at the BIBA Conference

FullCircl is proud to continue supporting the BIBA Annual Conference as an exhibitor.

We look forward to welcoming you to stand G10 where we can discuss the challenges you’re facing. Come and see us, meet our team, and tell us about your challenges so we can rise to them together.

Spoiler alert 🚨…

We will also be showcasing our new FullCircl X Acturis integration, a new connected solution for brokers, insurers, and MGAs that promises to deliver meaningful opportunities to drive growth through rich, contextualised, and connected company intelligence.

Follow us on LinkedIn for the latest updates on our plans for the event, including our exclusive drinks party.

FullCircl’s highlights and achievements

2022 is already a distant memory. The start of a new year is the perfect time to look back at what’s been accomplished, and what we can learn from the challenges faced, as well as looking forward to the opportunities ahead. 2022 was certainly a year of uncertainty, but as Benjamin Franklin once said, “out of adversity comes opportunity”.

2022 was year of great opportunity here at FullCircl, as we supported our customers in responding to their unique challenges and opportunities. But before I explore this further, I would like to take a minute to say thank you.

Thank you to all our customers for inspiring us, trusting us, innovating with us, being part of our journey, and letting us be a part of yours.

Here’s a look back at our highlights and achievements…

FullCircl’s highlights and achievements

On 1^st March we announced the final stage in the merger of Artesian and DueDil. Launching FullCircl to the market was a milestone achievement in the evolution of our business. This new brand identity captures our highly differentiated Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) proposition, and our bold vision for the future.

More than just a name change, our new brand consolidates all the best things about both businesses into one unified solution that is a true ally for regulated businesses.

From the outset there was strong rationale for bringing our businesses together and it’s been so encouraging to see how positively the market has responded to our proposition.

FullCircl is the only provider to offer a single solution for better decisions across every stage of the customer lifecycle. In 2023 we will cement our position as the only CLI platform that goes full circle (now you get why we’re called FullCircl) - helping our customers meet demanding customer expectations, stay ahead of the competition, and navigate the complexities of changing regulation - and, in doing so, deliver a demonstrable return on investment and the guarantee that they will realise value early and often.

We helped our customers grow

We now represent 7 out of the top 10 UK banks, 80% of all CMA9 institutions, and are the trusted platform for over 600 brands and 15,000 users, helping them grow by doing Better Business, Faster.

How do we do it?

CLI helps companies:

• Win the right customers – through tailored news and data-led insights on companies and their officers
• Onboard faster and with confidence – KYC screening for customer suitability, verification checks via a rules-based decision engine, and automated onboarding journeys powered by our API
• Keep customer for life – proactive monitoring and in-life customer care based on configurable rules to spot risks and opportunities faster

We kept up an exhilarating pace of innovation

If incorporating the best of both platforms, building a differentiated CLI proposition, and rebranding our business wasn’t enough, through our relentless drive for continuous product innovation we also launched several new features including:

• Company Group Explorer – a visual way to discover company hierarchies so regulated business can improve onboarding and reduce risk
• HMRC Import and Export Data Extension – allows users to understand which of their customers are trading internationally
• Sustainability Gazette – regular summaries of the latest ESG initiative across every market in which customer operate
• Sanctions Assistance – a free service aimed at helping our customers navigate the increasingly complex yet highly critical political landscape
• Major improvements in data infrastructure for richer and more accurate information for our customers clients, including unified monitoring for more holistic decision making , perpetual monitoring and advanced KYC and due diligence, and the delivery of actionable event alerts

In a major milestone which brought two of our market leading solutions together, we integrated our API and decision engine to enable customers to programmatically screen their customers and prospects based on customised rules and policies. This allows them to reduce cost to serve by automating pre-screening, executing compliance checks at point of origin, and bringing new levels of speed and efficiency to onboarding activities.

We made lots of new friends

We’re big believers in the value of innovation partnerships - the advantages they deliver to our customers, the opportunity to collaborate to accelerate innovation, and their ability to create new markets.

In 2022 we announced new data and technology partnerships with:

• Umazi, the enterprise digital identity provider, to automate and accelerate SME corporate due diligence
• NayaOne marketplace and digital sandbox to make CLI even more accessible to a diverse range of financial institutions looking to accelerate their business transformation
• Codat, the universal API for small business data, to provide integrations to the accounting platforms used by the majority of UK SMEs.
• Wiserfunding, to provide the most accurate SME credit risk analysis
• nCino, to provide a comprehensive compliance and risk assessment platform

As we move into 2023, we plan to bring you even more exciting partnerships, each of which will play key role in our journey. Shared growth through working together is a win-win for you, for us, and for our partners.

Our team continued to grow

We increased our headcount by 20% in 2022, including bolstering our leadership team as well as our customer success, sales development, training, and enterprise account management teams.

Notable appointments include:

• Stuart Boardman as our new Director of Channels and Revenue partnerships
• Chris Hares as our new Chief Technology Officer
• Promotions for Ashleigh Gwilliam (Insurance Success Director), Lucy Huntley (Banking Success Director) and William Fields (Director of Sales).

So, what’s coming up in 2023?

Well, it’s certainly not job done - that’s for sure. Resting on our laurels is simply not in our nature.

This year will see us double down on delivering even more value from the Customer Lifecycle Intelligence within our platform and delivering an ever more powerful monitoring solution. That means more R&D, more product development, and more focus on developing propositions and a market leading customer success programme that helps our customers deliver products and services faster, safer and more cost effectively. Plus, more investment to ensure we always provide the best insights from the best possible data sources, along with new partnerships to support the critical functionality that has become so vital to transforming and strengthening our customers’ operating models.

It's going to be another great year. We can’t wait to get started, so stay tuned for updates.

As pressures mount on UK banks, their focus is shifting towards the acquisition of new customers (and the retention of existing business) by improving customer experience (CX).

81% of bankers believe CX will be a key differentiator in the next four years, according to 2021 research from The Economist Intelligence Unit. Additionally, a wealth of recent research shows how investing in CX benefits commercial banking relationship management and can even double revenue.

A key part of this shift towards a better customer experience ecosystem is recognising that pure technological solutions are not enough when it comes to customer acquisition in the banking sector, especially in the current climate. To truly differentiate their CX and stand out amongst competitors, banks need to improve their digital and human services, and the ways in which they blend the two.

Why it is important to respond to challenging times with better CX

The last three years have brought multiple new stresses on business banking relationship management and customer acquisition models - with the pandemic, inflation, rising interest rates, and recessions leading to more vulnerable clients. These pressures compound the longer-term challenges of increased competition from digital disruptors, rising consumer expectations and increasing regulation.

With higher interest rates, more businesses are struggling with debt and avoiding new borrowing. Net lending is down and corporate insolvencies are spiking, significantly threatening banks’ revenues and profits. In this environment, banks cannot simply wait for the economic downturn to end. Commercial banking firms need to compete even harder and continue to find new ways to optimise their existing relationship management and customer acquisition processes.

Increasing customer acquisition in banking

With the aforementioned challenges in mind, how do banks fine-tune their customer acquisition strategies and onboarding processes?

Digital solutions can streamline the provision of less complex products, such as simple deposit accounts; however, FullCircl’s customers are finding that more complex services, such as business loans, need a blend of technology and humans to improve customer experience, especially when it comes to smarter onboarding.

Smart onboarding

To support smart onboarding, banks need better customer lifecycle intelligence with enriched, super-connected data and insights on companies, updated daily to enhance conversations with clients. They should have a rules-based decision engine to screen and onboard B2B customers in seconds, based on their risk profile, but with the flexibility to make human decisions built in.

Banks also need a holistic view of risk, connecting dots across real-time financial and credit information to identify quality customers. With a mass of instantly accessible information in one place, banks can have a much more detailed picture of each customer’s situation. This supports front-line team members, freeing them to put their
focus even more on delivering superior customer outcomes and frictionless onboarding.

Assessing risk

Superior customer lifecycle intelligence also helps banking institutions build trust with new customers by finding out more about each businesses’ goals and pain points and how they can help. For example, having better initial data about a specific client’s risk can help frontline teams make faster lending decisions but may also show that there are good reasons for a human decision to go outside standard policy and provide a more flexible service. Both will lead to better customer satisfaction scores.

One of FullCircl’s customers, a funding platform, uses the same holistic view to accurately assess its customers’ risk and fine-tune the matching of customers with the right funder. Such risk monitoring helps the funding platform avoid lots of unnecessary manpower and means that they can service customers much better.

Forward-thinking banks are also using data and automated, tailored cost-benefit analyses to look for financially sound customers with few signs of vulnerability. Having that detail available at the earliest opportunity in customer acquisition can help them make better-informed decisions about new clients, saving time and trouble later.

Turning complex banking regulations into opportunity

Many of our commercial banking customers are talking about combining human and digital solutions to support compliance with increasingly onerous regulations. This increased regulation includes the incoming Consumer Duty rules, which set higher consumer protection standards across financial services and require firms to put customers’ needs first. Other examples are anti-money-laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) regulations, which have grown increasingly complex.

To respond to this increased workload, banks need to automate tasks that will enable fast, frictionless and automated onboarding during the customer acquisition process. Using enriched information to pre-populate forms and identify Ultimate Beneficial Owners in seconds saves valuable time (and money) and reduces friction.

If your bank can advertise faster onboarding times and better outcomes generally, it will turn compliance into an opportunity - increasing customer satisfaction scores and becoming another important selling point for new customers.

Relationship management of existing commercial banking customers

As we’ve established, it’s not just about new customer acquisition. Many businesses need more help from their banks in times of economic stress, even if they are an established customer. To meet this demand, banks need actionable intelligence at all relevant points of the customer lifecycle, allowing for more structured and valuable communication at each step and helping to improve customer profitability.

Early detection of potential problems

Data insights can provide early warning indicators that an existing customer has financial difficulties; this allows the bank to intervene and potentially help, rather than responding too late. Such early indicators of financial difficulty might include a change in credit risk, extending payment terms with customers, or holding lower cash reserves. Many of these data insights are made possible by open banking technology and application program interfaces (APIs).

Early detection of potential problems

As well as providing banks with the information they need to be able to help their customers, these data insights also allow banking staff to show empathy and build customer trust and confidence, vital components of commercial banking relationship management.

As well as this, increased data insight can help staff offer more positive support, such as identifying when the time is right for the customer to expand, acquire, or exit - and proactively notifying and advising them accordingly.

WTW, a FullCircl customer, uses up-to-the-minute data insights to build a 360° view of each customer, driving best practice sales behaviours, and achieving a 98% adoption rate.

Where other institutions may be relying on static CRM data to keep tabs on their contacts and customers, financial companies using data insight tools can react better to changes within the market, and with the customer individually, in order to offer a better partnership and retain the business.

Customer acquisition and relationship management - How FullCircl can help

FullCircl is a Customer Lifecycle Intelligence platform that helps commercial banks and other B2B companies do better business, faster. It allows front and middle office teams to acquire the right customers, accelerate B2B customer onboarding, and keep them for life.

The open banking APIs on our platform access 270 million connections - the richest and most up-to-date insight available on UK and Irish companies - allowing for highly detailed analysis and insights on potential and existing customers. Our APIs can also push data changes and events directly into customers’ CRM systems to allow an account to be opened almost instantly.

Our platform is used by over 600 customers - including many traditional and challenger banks - to meet increasing customer expectations, navigate the complexities of changing regulation, succeed in customer acquisition, and stay ahead of competition when it comes to client relationship management. View our case studies to see how.

Now in its ninth year, the British Bank Awards are recognised as a symbol of excellence throughout the banking industry. We are thrilled to be nominated in this year’s awards and need your help by voting for us! 

We have a successful history with the British Bank Awards, being recognised as RegTech Partner of the Year in both 2019 and 2020 as our former company, DueDil. Now, as FullCircl, we’re going for the win again. 

Winners are determined solely based on votes. If you’re a customer, partner or someone in our network, please show your support by voting. It only takes 2 minutes and as a small company with big ambitions, this sort of recognition helps us know we’re on the right path! 

Vote for us here as RegTech Partner of the Year. 

About the British Bank Awards. 

Now in their ninth year, the British Bank Awards, run by Smart Money People, are widely recognised as the symbol of excellence across the banking industry, as determined by those who matter most, the customer. 

Award categories cover most areas of the banking sector with specific categories for innovation, new entrants, ethical providers, influencers and many more. 

Key dates: 

• Voting Opens (Partner Awards) - 16th January 2023
• Finalist Announced - 20th March 2023
• Voting Ends - 11th April 2023
• Winner Reveal - 11th May 2023

Winners will be revealed at a gala event on Thursday 11th May. We hope to see you there! 

“Now in their ninth year, Smart Money People’s British Bank Awards celebrate the very best of British within the banking industry, as recognised by those who matter most - the customer. Each year the competition gets more fierce, and we’re sure that 2023 will be no different. Good luck to all the entrants.”

Jacqueline Dewey, CEO of Smart Money People

Why vote for FullCircl? 

Last year was huge for us – following the merger of Artesian and DueDil we rebranded to FullCircl. At the same time, we launched our Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) proposition aimed at solving many of the challenges faced by regulated businesses. 

We help relationship professionals within financial institutions to engage with their business customers at the right time in the right way. For our clients, this reduces the guesswork on how best to support their customers, ultimately allowing them to provide products and services that are faster, safer, and less expensive than what they’re able to provide without FullCircl. 

There are two main groups that benefit from Customer Lifecycle Intelligence. Financial institutions, who benefit directly, and their small and medium sized business customers (SMEs), who benefit indirectly. UK and Irish financial institutions face several challenges serving their SME customers, and these challenges are only getting more acute. 

• Doing More with Less: Financial service providers need to do more with less. This is due to the increasing cost of regulation and pressure to grow, despite downward pressure on budgets.
• Faster, Safer, Less Expensive: Financial service providers need to serve increasingly complex, unsecured risk, even when they don’t directly own the customer relationship. The tools to do this need to be easily configurable and fast to deploy with insight available out of the box.
• Continuous Relationship Investment: Acquiring customers costs money but losing them costs more. Customer-centric businesses need to regularly reinforce their relationships and stay ahead of risks.

FullCircl’s CLI platform includes; 

• Relevant, up-to-date intelligence from specific data sources and partners, tailored specifically for the needs of financial institutions
• Customisable rules to drive actions based on internal & external events
• Strengthening clients’ operating model through APIs, notifications, and our web app  
• Partnerships to support critical functionality that is outside our expertise

Hopefully you agree and think that’s worthy of a vote. If you do, you can cast your vote here:

RegTech Partner of the Year

“Banks are deluded into believing they’re digitally transforming their organisation when all they’re doing is deploying new tools for yesterday’s industry…in other words, they’re simply playing catch-up.”

Does this sentiment sound worryingly accurate?

Your organisation has no doubt accelerated its digital transformation in the last few years. You’ve also likely invested vast amounts of capital and resource into improving customer experience, reducing cost-to-serve, and meeting the demands of today’s rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.  

But let me ask you a tough question – has the impact of all this investment really met with expectations?

It's time to start transforming for the future

Let’s imagine a future where complexity is simplified, you really know your customers, they really trust you, cost-to-serve is dramatically reduced, and compliance is embedded into every aspect of the customer lifecycle journey.

But did you know the technology already exists to make this future a reality?

This is Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI), and it has the capability to drive your digital transformation further and faster than ever before.

Our whitepaper ‘How Customer Lifecycle Intelligence Can Help Every Bank & FSI Become Digital Future Ready’ explains why leading banks are already harnessing this differentiated strategy to help them:

• Win the right customers
• Accelerate onboarding
• Keep customer for life

Better Business, Faster

A great divide is emerging between those who are adapting to change, and those who are being left behind.

Investment in CLI will deliver the impactful transformation you’ve desired for too long. 

Download your free copy of our whitepaper today.

Following on from our recent series of regulatory roadmap briefings, FullCircl explores the impact of the Government’s latest commitment to tackling economic crime and improving transparency over corporate entities.

What is the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill?

Currently at committee stage in the House of Commons, the Bill follows on from the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act, passed in March 2022 in response to the Russia/Ukraine conflict. This legislation served to significantly simplify the process for imposing sanctions, identifying, and tracing illicit wealth, and preventing ‘oligarchs’ from seeking damages.  

The new Bill takes this a step further, aiming to mitigate the risk of bad actors taking advantage of the openness of the UK economy to perpetrate fraud, money laundering and organised crime. The government is committed to bringing this latest bill forward to deliver a wider-ranging suite of reforms on tackling economic crime and improving transparency over corporate entities.

The Bill will deliver:

• Reforms to Companies House
• Reforms to prevent the abuse of limited partnerships
• Additional powers to seize and recover suspected criminal crypto assets
• Reforms which give businesses more confidence to share information to tackle money laundering and other economic crime
• New intelligence gathering powers for law enforcement and removal of nugatory burdens on business

In terms of financial institutions’ ability to find the right customer, onboard them faster and keep them for life, it is the first point – reform to Companies House – that will have the biggest impact.

Why the need to reform Companies House?

The Bill aims to transform the role and operation of Companies House, which has come under fire from organisations including UK Finance for being “dysfunctional” and helping to facilitate business fraud. Banking leaders have also entered the debate, criticising the online register of UK-based companies. It’s worth pointing out that Companies House is itself in favour of reforms and wants to act as a preventor of fraud and economic crime.

The aim of the Bill is to ensure that information held at Companies House is more reliable and accurate. It will be given greater powers to question and challenge information that is submitted, as well as add or remove inaccurate information. It is also anticipated that further legislation will allow for the cross-referencing of Companies House data against other corporate data sources.

The Bill focuses on improving content at Companies House and delivering data protection in the following ways:

• Knowing who is setting up, managing, and controlling corporate entities
• Improving the accuracy and usability of data on the companies register
• Protecting personal information
• Ensuring compliance, sharing intelligence, and other measures to deter abuse of corporate entities

What does this all mean for financial institutions?

For financial institutions, transforming Companies House from a passive library to a proactive gatekeeper will deliver greater transparency, and greater confidence in the information held, as well as more accurate information for identifying and mitigating potential financial crime risks.

However, this is not going to happen overnight. It’s going to take time for Companies House to manoeuvre through this, and we can likely expect a phased approach to both implementation and remediation.

So, how to stay ahead of reform?

As UK Finance recently pointed out, a greater focus on transparency, data quality and reliability will require the harnessing of technology. Opportunities include:

• Automated data validations, screening, and cross-checking
• Machine learning and data analytics
• Data Matching and graph database technology
• Adverse media screening
• API-driven data sharing

The great news is that FullCircl can help you deliver on all these opportunities.

Improving decision-making has always been at the heart of what we stand for. We welcome these reforms and the impact they will have in terms of greater transparency, accuracy, and reliability of data for our financial service customers.

It’s also great news for us. Companies House is just one of many data sources our Customer Lifecycle Intelligence solution harnesses to deliver super-connected, enriched data and unique insights on companies and the officers inside them. The more reliable the data, the more valuable our tools, applications and business logic become – helping our customers find customers that fit their risk profile, onboard them quicker and keep them for life.

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence is not static data - we deliver a multi-dimensional view that combines advanced data ingestion, validation, data matching, and augmentation with real-time media screening and more. All neatly delivered via web app or API.

Whether it’s automated data collection and critical checks, ensuring compliance, confidently targeting the right customers, or growing advocacy through frictionless onboarding and support, FullCircl is helping the UK’s leading banks and financial services providers do Better Business, Faster.

Take a read of some of our resources or customer stories to find out more. When you’re ready to talk, get in touch with a member of our team today.