Single source of the truth for accurate business funding decisions

Google is not a front-line risk mitigator, it’s a search engine. And yet as many as 4 in 5 financial service organisations still use it to drive mission-critical AML and KYC processes. 

Whilst Google has huge value as the ‘go-to’ online research tool, no mass market search engine is going to be suitable for high-value tasks such as Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Supplier (KYS) due diligence, or risk management activities. Google is designed to index the whole internet and carry out general searches. Whilst you can ask it a series of iterative targeted questions to eke out the answers you need, this is at best inefficient and hugely time-consuming, and at worst inaccurate or incomplete – meaning the chances of fraudulent transactions going through is high. 

Perhaps it’s not surprising then that the same survey also reported 47% of respondents’ time is spent processing data into a usable format. 

There’s got to be a better way than ‘Googling’ your customers 

According to PwC, financial services businesses use only 0.5% of available data.  Whilst those spearheading change in the financial services sector are looking to get more value from their data ecosystems; make it more useable, more accessible, drive more 

This presents not just an opportunity for improvement, but rather a transformation that is vital to the future relevance and efficiency of the FSI sector. 

Client onboarding is one of the most critical functions for FSIs, as it directly impacts client experience, servicing, and relationships — all of which, in turn, impact profits. FSI organisations must ensure they have an accurate view of their customer risk, remain compliant with ever-changing regulations, and, at the same time, not compromise on the customer experience. Failure to perform to the best of a bank’s  or FSIs abilities in any of these areas can lead to reputational damage, sanctions, and hefty penalties. 

Why then, you ask, would any organisation place their trust in Google for such high-value and highly complex activities? 

Why struggle when you can automate? 

Let’s look at a little deeper into the nature of the struggle for FSI professionals when grappling with data as well as how automation provides the solution: 

• False Positives – monitoring via Google may lead a researcher to wrongly categorise unsuspicious transactions as suspicious. For a typical financial institution monitoring KYC, 75%-85% of the alerts are false positives. By leveraging an advanced AI-powered rules-engine the risk of false positives is immediately reduced, whilst at the same time generating a deeper and more accurate view based on each institutions’ criteria and risk appetite 
• Need for supplementary data sources – Firmographic information alone isn’t enough to create the highly relevant insights needed for accurate KYC, CDD and AML. By harnessing the ability to ingest and match millions of structured and unstructured data points, financial institutions can quickly receive the impactful insights and risk intelligence needed to find the right customers, onboard them faster, and keep them for life 
• Duplication – Limited collaboration between front, middle and back-office teams creates duplication of effort and information siloes. This in turn leads to customer frustration. 12% of companies said they changed banks as a result of KYC issues, a Thomson Reuters survey found. Advanced technologies such as FullCircl are helping FSIs onboard business customers up to 94% faster with automated KYC, AML and credit checks. 
• Unclear data provenance/lack of data source – Lack of trusted and high-quality data is driven by inefficient data capture methods such as using Google. 
• Volume/monitoring unstructured data – The amount of data generated daily is mind-boggling. 80 to 90 percent of data generated and collected by organisations is unstructured; and its volumes are growing rapidly — many times faster than the rate of growth for structured data. The challenge with harnessing and monitoring it is becoming harder every day. Customer Lifecycle intelligence tools sucg as FullCircl’s Business Information Graph (B.I.G™) ingest billions of data points every day from a multitude of official and third-party sources, then match and enrich this information to unlock the most accurate and contextualised view of every customer 

Replace Google with Customer Lifecycle Intelligence from FullCircl 

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence by FullCircl brings together: 

• Super-connected enriched-data and insights on companies and the officers inside them – FullCircl Business Information Graph and API 
• A configurable, low-code decision engine to screen and onboard in seconds based on your specific risk profiles – FullCircl Connect Rules Based Decision-Engine 
• Continuous monitoring and timely intelligence for proactive first engagement and remediation – FullCircl Engage Monitoring and Business Development Applications 

To help you: 

1.  Win the right customers - find, engage, and win the right customers for your business, products, and risk appetite. 
2. Accelerate onboarding - fast, frictionless onboarding with automated AML, KYC and Credit checks that surpass both customer and compliance expectations. 
3. Keep customers for life - Deliver proactive in-life customer care as new risks and opportunities emerge. 

All within one platform! 

 What makes us unique? 

•  We are the only platform that goes FullCircl - The only technology partner who can help you find, onboard and retain the right customers for life 
• Proven CLI platform advantage - Easy to configure, fast time to value across digital and human channels, delivering super connected data and engagement insights 
• We invest in your success - Proven enablement program to get you to value quickly and ensure you stay there 

Metro Bank, an early adopter of FullCircl has reported that using the platform they have been able to automate many aspects of their operational process for on-boarding new customers or screening the back-book in a fraction of the time – at scale.    

Speaking about the experience of Ronan Heeran, Financial Crime Risk & Control Manager at Metro Bank commented: “We started working with FullCircl to explore ways we could introduce greater efficiency to the customer onboarding journey. We loved the idea of being able to aggregate data from a number of different sources and map our risk appetite using FullCirc’s rules-based automation to flag issues immediately. The result meant we could deliver a process which in some cases was 94% quicker than our existing process.” 

Likewise in the Insurance sector early adopter QBE, has reported that they’ve been able to automate many aspects of the commercial underwriting process which touch external unstructured data, FullCircl’s B.I.G™ could easily ingest. As well as the benefit of a simplified and consolidated underwriting process across all 200 of its underwriters.   

David Jones, Director of Underwriting at QBE commented: “the flexibility and configurability of FullCircl’s platform enables QBE to be proactive, rather than reactive, to changes in data for client assessment.” 

Let us prove we are better than Google 

 We love a challenge. In fact, we love it so much we guarantee we can help you quickly eliminate complexity, reduce cost to serve, really know your customers (and ensure they really trust you), embed sustainability and become 100% compliance assured. 

 So why not give us a try. Contact us today to review our product suite, API and web applications, and to set up your structured pilot. 

The payments market has seen considerable disruption in the last decade, with fintechs rewriting the playbook on customer expectations (both B2C and B2B) around how they send and receive money.   

Traditional cash and credit card payments are on a steady decline due to the increasing role of digitisation, making electronic payments the very epicentre of banking transformation in 2022.  

Global cashless payment volumes are set to increase by more than 80% by 2025, and the expected 86% shift to ecommerce will require heightened investment in online payment solutions. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest disruptions in the payment sector are still emerging:  

• Open banking is set to create a level playing field for payment innovations that deliver faster settlements and cheaper payment rails – it is estimated that by 2025 there will be more than 27 billion Internet of Things (IoT) connections shaping the way we pay 
• Alternative Payment Methods (APM) continue to provide faster, cheaper payment services than traditional banks 
• Cryptocurrencies and crypto wallets are increasingly gaining popularity due to their potential to disrupt and simplify transactions 
• There is a growing appetite for emerging trends such as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) – NFT sales volumes swelled from $13.7 million in 2020 to $2.5 billion in 2022 
• Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) was one of the biggest retail trends in 2021 and this is set to continue in 2022. While emerging Pay Now Buy Later (PNBL) is becoming increasingly attractive thanks to its ESG credentials and potential product tie-ups 

Keeping pace with fintech disruption 

Traditional banks and incumbent payment providers, often hampered by legacy technology, are playing an aggressive game of catch-up when it comes to payment innovation and staying ahead of customer demands.   

Soaring digital payment volumes are leaving many banks vulnerable to disruptive competition. While banks still dominate the world of business transactions, in the consumer sector fintechs are winning market share by unbundling banking and financial services products and services, focusing in to disrupt incumbents by pinpointing and exploiting weaknesses in user experience and operational inefficiencies. Payments are no different.   

In 2022 the rise of open banking will further intensify competition, leading to a raft of new solutions for customers. Incumbent banks therefore need to adapt and find new ways to differentiate.  

The data advantage  

Across banking, data-driven intelligence is enhancing customer experience and driving operational efficiencies; the payments sector is no exception.  

The success banks enjoy will depend in a large part on their approach to data and its role in enhancing customer experience, meeting compliance requirements such as KYC and AML, and responding to regulatory pressures in a rapidly-changing landscape.   

The volume of data generated and handled in financial services is enormous, and in banks, 90% of useful data comes from payments. So how to turn that useful data into useful intelligence?  

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence for every payment department 

Business Development – find the right customers  

The difference between a profitable customer and an unprofitable one is shrinking by the day. Banks need to remain proactively up to date with industry developments, emerging customer trends and new opportunities for growth.   

Payment data is immensely valuable but for incumbent players with legacy payment structures, it is often held within silos, making it hard to extract and refine to drive new business growth. Banks therefore typically use Creditsafe, Experian, Google, and LinkedIn to supplement their payment data – a time-consuming process that still delivers a very fragmented view.   

To differentiate, banks need to leverage real-time customer data to provide personally tailored insights and proactive advice.  

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) takes a data matching approach combined with real-time data to deliver rich and timely insights and applies each bank's individual rules to pre-screen customers for suitability. This reduces the cost to acquire by ensuring banks are efficiently pursuing the best opportunities.  

Onboarding 

A well-designed onboarding process is a sign of a great payment service provider. This will attract new customers and reassure them that they’ll soon be making and accepting payments quickly and easily.  

Likewise, onboarding new merchants is vital to growth and bringing in more transactions. However, banks that get it wrong run the potential risk of onboarding fraudulent transactions, which can impact both profit and reputation.  

CLI enables banks to provide fast, frictionless onboarding whilst reducing costs and improving compliance. Access detailed financial and historical company intelligence (shareholders, group structure, ultimate beneficial owners and more) from verified and validated sources, contextualised and mapped to ensure nothing is missed at any stage of the onboarding process.  

Identify key events like CCJs or Gazette notices immediately, by checking potential customers/merchants against global PEP and sanctions lists and stay ahead of changes as they occur in real-time.  

Continuous risk monitoring, regulatory and legal compliance  

Banks must continuously monitor and scrutinise customer intelligence and transactions as part of a risk-based KYC and AML compliance and risk mitigation programme. But many find it tough to balance their compliance, regulatory and legal responsibilities with customer experience.   

Similarly, an ever-growing amount of regulatory change and industry initiatives in payments can make it difficult to keep up. But having a team of people dedicated to following every update is a luxury few can afford.  

CLI ensures banks stop leaving themselves exposed by only evaluating a snapshot of risk. Continuous compliance provides a constant real-time 360° view of companies and merchants, ensuring banks can understand payment viability and mitigate regulatory risk proactively, rather than reactively, and keep the cost to serve under control – custom alerts automatically notify of any changes to credit scores, adverse media and other red flags.  

Retention – keep customers for life  

Competition from fintechs is likely to drive up the payments sector's cost of customer acquisition, as well as impact customer attrition. Incumbents therefore, need to revamp their retention strategies. It’s vital that banks provide high-value, in-life support to strengthen customer relationships as payment sector competition intensifies.  

CLI is about removing the siloed nature of payment data. Instead of banks losing time trying to collect and analyse a collection of disassociated data points, CLI provides a comprehensive 360° view, infused with sophisticated customer intelligence and constant monitoring of every single change to a customer’s information throughout the relationship lifecycle.   

With CLI banks can provide personalised experiences, improve retention and increase upsell and cross-sell opportunities.  

Better Business Faster  

2022 is set to see a seismic change in the payments landscape, with open banking driving innovation and higher consumer demand for non-traditional methods increasing competition. Payment innovation is not just the realm of fintechs, there are huge opportunities for banks to take advantage of if they can unlock the data challenge and build a customer lifecycle intelligence approach for a customer-centric cashless future.  

Get in touch with Donald Mbeutcha, FullCircl's payments specialist to explore how we can help unlock the intelligence you need to succeed.  

The last two years have dealt a seismic blow to the banking and financial services industry, the impact of the pandemic left global commerce facing extensive and protracted disruption, whilst conflict in Europe has a resulting supply-side shock. One thing has however remained constant during, the importance of getting the basics right: 

• Improving client experience 
• Strengthening controls 
• Reducing cost and complexity 
• Earning client trust every day 

Few activities combine all of these transformational and reputational challenges like onboarding a new client and completing Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and credit decision processes. For onboarding and operations leaders, they pose unique, sometimes highly emotive, and highly complex challenges. 

The urgency to transform customer onboarding in banking and financial services 

Banks and FSIs have a unique opportunity, to take the lead and reach out to their anxious customers and establish long-lasting relationships. 

However, sales and relationship management teams face significant pressures to bring on new customers, only to find their efforts frustrated by the sheer length of time taken to arrive at a decision about whether the client meets the bank’s credit and risk appetite. 

As a result, it takes an average of 32 days to onboard a new customer, and thanks to the departmental nature of banking operations, each customer goes through around 8 different interactions during the customer onboarding process. 

As reported in a whitepaper by Arachnys: 

One in three (36%) financial institutions have lost customers due to inefficient or slow onboarding and 81% believe poor data management lengthens onboarding and negatively affects customer experience. 

84% believe the client experience during the customer onboarding process impacts the lifetime value of the client. 

But it’s not just customer experience that is suffering, slow onboarding processes in banks are costly: 

• In terms of meeting KYC requirements for compliance, a large FI requires an average of 307 employees to work towards meeting standards. The associated costs of that kind of people-based work are not insignificant. 
• Poor CX costs a financial institution around $10 billion in revenue per year. 
• Researchers at Oliver Wyman have found that it typically takes 90-120 days to onboard corporate banking customers 

Why a siloed approach won’t work in the current new normal 

Within banks and FSIs selling to companies involves a period of prospecting and engagement before any formal customer onboarding process can commence. 

More experienced individuals within these teams tend to be quite adept at recognising typical risk issues at this stage; if they are evident. 

For the most part, this sales process is worked upon in good faith by both parties, and aspects of a deal (such as products and limits) are decided upon readiness for the onboarding phase. 

Identity documents are taken and checked, and depending upon the process of the bank involved, the credit risk process is started, and aspects of the KYC process may begin. 

It is at this point that the bank or FSI is assessing various risks as required by their policies, designed to meet regulatory requirements. The outcome of these checks is often to complete the onboarding process and to welcome the new customer. 

However, in many instances, bank/FSI policies dictate that the nature of the deal needs to change in one or more aspects – and in more extreme cases, the bank or FSI is unable to complete the deal entirely. 

In the new normal it will be important for front-line staff to optimise their use of time and resources. If sales and relationship managers are wasting time chasing the wrong type of deal, then compliance and KYC teams are likewise being unnecessarily burdened with unmanageable workloads.

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence - the pillar of advanced onboarding 

It is commonplace to talk of meeting the KYC needs of a bank by accessing more complete data sources, more accurately and more quickly. 

On the surface, this may appear a good idea, but looking holistically at the goals of the bank, it is instead contributing to the problem of an unmanageable workload in KYC and therefore contributing to longer queues, longer onboarding windows, lower customer satisfaction and ultimately, greater dissonance between the twin drivers of meeting regulatory compliance and delivering commercial growth. 

Data alone is not the answer. 

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) has the capability to drive onboarding transformation further and faster than ever before.   

CLI provides fast, frictionless onboarding that puts your customers at the heart of the process – whilst reducing costs, and improving compliance: 

• Build a 360° view: unlock and map context all in one place and easy to analyse 
• Reduce manual efforts: pre-populate onboarding forms based on enriched data  
• Automate compliance policies: Set rules for consistent policy application  
• Reduce cost to onboard: No matter how complex save valuable time & reduce friction 
• Spot risks sooner:  get a more holistic view of risk to ensure nothing is missed  
• Assess risk in real-time:  stay one step ahead of changes as they occur  

Onboarding Supercharged 

FullCircl enables you to definitively provide fast, frictionless onboarding that puts your customers at the heart of the process – whilst reducing costs, and improving compliance, too. 

 It works by: 

• Delivering a customer experience that sets you apart - pre-populate your customer’s application using timely information from official sources  
• Letting you look inside and seamlessly gather all required KYC, AML, and credit information in one fell swoop 
• Go deeper - understand connections between directors, shareholders, and group companies up to the Ultimate Beneficial Owner 
• Stay up to date and always on - we refresh our information up to three times per day and have the industry’s leading Service Level Agreement for service you can trust 

“We started working with FullCircl to explore ways we could introduce greater efficiency to the customer onboarding journey. We loved the idea of being able to aggregate data from a number of different sources and map our risk appetite to FullCircl’s rules framework to flag issues immediately. The result meant we could deliver a process which in some cases was 94% quicker than our existing process.” Ronan Heeran, Financial Crime Risk & Control Manager, Metro Bank    

“We exist to serve our customers and earn their trust by intuitively understanding their needs and working out solutions to their problems. FullCircl is the engine that drives this vision, providing our RM’s with the data and insight-driven ability to create compelling experiences throughout the customer journey.” Andy Gray, Managing Director, Corporate & Commercial Coverage, NatWest  

“FullCircl plays a fundamental part in ensuring our current customer onboarding process is slick and efficient. FullCircl's knowledge graph allows Banked to automate a portion of our due diligence, taking a bit of the heavy lifting off our shoulders. It provides us with answers to some of the key questions we were manually having to ask customers in our previous onboarding process.” Joe Pettersson, CTO, Banked 

What if you could increase your onboarding efficiency by 25%? 

You can!  

What are you waiting for? Start doing Better Business, Faster. 

To understand more about how Customer Lifecycle Intelligence can help every bank and FSI become digital future ready please download our new whitepaper.  

Contact us today to discuss how we can help you engage the right business customers, onboard them quickly and keep them for life. 

It’s not easy keeping pace with the rapid changes happening in the payments space. Issuers, networks, payment processors and merchants are all investing in next-generation innovation. What were once considered to be ‘alternative payment methods' are now mainstream with the rapid adoption of technologies including digital wallets, contactless payments and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL).  

The pace of transformation is set to keep on accelerating. Global cashless payment volumes are set to increase by more than 80% by 2025, to almost 1.9 trillion transactions, and the IDC predicts that by 2030 60% of global consumers will have made transactions using an asset class other than fiat currency.  

Leading the way in the payment innovation race  

The IDC estimates that 74% of global consumer payments will be handled by non-financial services institutions (FSIs) by 2030. Incumbent FSIs however, are far from being displaced from payments if they can reshape the role that they fulfil in the payments landscape of tomorrow.  

A line has been drawn in the sand between those in the payment sector who are investing in modern technology innovations and those who are not, especially as customer expectations around sending and receiving money becoming ever more demanding, and customers increasingly take it for granted that they should be able to pay and get paid by any means they wish, at any time, no matter where they are.   

The value of data is therefore of immense importance. Tapping into advanced intelligence will be a decisive factor, as players in the payment sector look to invest in the next generation of payment technologies.  

This is especially true for those with the ability to make connections and recognise patterns in data to find, onboard and retain more customers and accelerate product development, improve compliance, risk assessment and fraud management, and drive efficiencies at scale…  

Payment innovations include:  

Blockchain  

The technology underpinning bitcoin and other digital currencies, blockchain is emerging as a way for companies to instantly verify transactions. Numerous banks, retailers, and others FSIs are experimenting with blockchain, which can enable cost-effective transactions, traceable money movement, near-instant payments and settlements, and reduce the risk of fraud.  

The Internet of Things (IoT)  

The need for physical cards is diminishing as connectivity and device penetration increases. As new devices come online, banks and FSIs are working to create best-in-class payment solutions for the growing world of connected devices, as well as working hard to guarantee the security and seamlessness of payments.  

Crypto currency  

Non-physical money is growing at a faster rate than cash. Crypto or digital currencies have the potential to replace ‘money’ as a new widely recognised form of payment. In fact, the IMF believe digital currencies have the potential to transform the financial sector and open the door to financial services for 1.7 billion people without traditional bank accounts. And as more countries become increasingly connected, crypto will facilitate trade and market integration, making its impact even more significant.  

NFTs  

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are tokenised versions of assets that can be traded on a blockchain, like Bitcoin or other crypto currencies. Unlike Bitcoin, however, each NFT is a unique entity and can’t be exchanged one-for-one. NFTs are paving a new way for how digital goods and content are bought, sold, shared, and distributed.  

Virtual Reality  

VR technology now has application potential beyond its roots in gaming and entertainment. Banks, FSIs and businesses can harness this technology to deliver immersive payment and trading experiences for customers – similar, if you like, to virtual stores in e-commerce  

What is Customer Lifecycle Intelligence?  

There is a big opportunity for incumbent FSIs to take the lead in powering the next generation of payment innovation and compete with e-commerce, fintech disruptors, brands, and telcos if they can harness data at every stage of the payment customer lifecycle.  

Forget standard customer data, Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) delivers a multi-dimensional view that combines advanced data ingestion, validation and augmentation with real-time news, social signals and more. All neatly delivered via a web app or API.  

The end result is that FSIs can move fast to:  

• Find the right customers – CLI takes a data matching approach combined with real-time data to deliver rich and timely insights and applies each payment service provider’s own individual rules to pre-screen customers for suitability against risk appetite statements, and the evolving security needs of the payment industry as per PCI DSS v4.0. This reduces time and cost to acquire by ensuring banks are efficiently pursuing the best opportunities. 
• Onboard with confidence - CLI enables payment service providers to provide fast, frictionless onboarding whilst reducing costs and improving compliance. Access detailed financial and historical company intelligence (shareholders, group structure, ultimate beneficial owners and more) from verified and validated sources, contextualised and mapped to ensure nothing is missed at any stage of the onboarding process. Identify key events like CCJs or Gazette notices immediately, by checking potential customers/merchants against global PEP and sanctions lists and stay ahead of changes as they occur in real time. 
• Keep them for life - Instead of losing time trying to collect and analyse a collection of disassociated data points, CLI provides a comprehensive 360° view, infused with sophisticated customer intelligence, customer and sector news, and constant monitoring of every single change to a customer’s information throughout the relationship lifecycle. With CLI, payment service providers can future-proof payment decision making and provide personalised experiences that improve retention and increase upsell and cross-sell opportunities. 

Don’t just take our word for it…  

“FullCircl plays a really important part when it comes to simplifying our merchant onboarding journey. We trust the insights that we get from FullCircl and we don’t have to go to our customers and ask them questions.”  

Ben Feilding Product Manager at Dojo, part of Paymentsense  

Better Business Faster  

According to KPMG, the greatest value exchange taking place in payment systems will be found in data rather than in transactions themselves, opening up a huge variety of new opportunities and securing a competitive advantage.  

Get in touch with Donald Mbeutcha, FullCircl’s payments specialist, to explore how Customer Lifecycle Intelligence can help power your payment innovation journey. 

Is this the most challenging insurance market you’ve ever experienced? 

That was the question we asked 150 insurance broking and underwriting professionals during our recent hard market webinar. Unsurprisingly, the answer was overwhelming ‘yes’. 

Demand for insurance is exceeding supply for the first time in 20 years. Capacity is tougher to come by, competition is limited, premium rates are increasing, coverage is contracting, and insurers are being more selective with risks (especially property, financial lines and professional risk exposures) and disinclined to negotiate terms. Similarly, underwriting standards have tightened significantly. 

So, what can be done? How can commercial insurance brokers maintain a competitive advantage during these really challenging times? How can they overcome challenges and realise opportunities (like a phoenix from the ashes, opportunity does arise out of adversity)? How can they maintain and even improve relationships with underwriters and customers? 

Webinar panellists Richard Blackburn, MD North East Region at PIB Insurance Brokers, Martin Camp, Divisional Director and Head of New Business at Aston Lark and Fay Reinhold-Shor, UK Regional Manager at Zywave, joined FullCircl CEO Andrew Yates for a deep-dive debate into the state of the market, combating relationship strain and how to drive a return to better days by harnessing data science. Here is what they uncovered… 

Why is this the hardest market for 20 years? 

There were signs of market hardening pre-covid – big claims coming out of the US, increasing claims costs generally and a spate of flooding all contributing. But without stating the obvious, what makes this hard market strikingly different from those of previous decades is the impact of Covid-19. 

The pandemic acted as the catalyst to a perfect storm for commercial insurance brokers. Most significantly, lack of accessibility to insurers and underwriters, and reduced capacity on the market. 

As reinsurers began imposing terms on insurers, many drew back or exited completely from some lines of business. In financial lines and professional risks such as D&O, ML and PI insurers began picking up risks they didn’t even realise they were exposed to when the policies were first written, reducing their appetite even further. 

The rapidly changing circumstances of clients also became a huge challenge as regular sources of data became out-of-date quickly, and therefore tougher to verify and validate. 

Has the hard market put a strain on underwriter-broker relationships? 

‘Yes’ said 70% of respondents, and our panel concurred. Rates are being driven up and frustration is bubbling away, but ultimately in a hard market, underwriter-broker relationships are more important than ever. Brokers do, after all, need insurers as much as they need clients. 

This can be overcome by getting ahead of the game. Work further out from renewal (even as much as 6 months out) to start gathering more detailed information about customer needs and exposures to assist underwriter decision making. Improve due diligence processes to help speed up execution. And strive to understand and empathise with the market pressures being imposed on insurers, so you can work in a way to make life easier for them, and yourself, by presenting the right information and expediting the process. 

Pull out all the stops to maintain these relationships. 

What is the biggest opportunity for broker success during a hard market? 

With so much disruption in the market, the greatest opportunity for brokers today is new business. 

Take a value-based approach, and harness Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) to acquire more of the right customers with less effort, in less time. Find more of the right customers by shining a light on areas not being covered by incumbent providers, pinpointing the best prospects with ease, and surfacing unique insights for tailored service provision, customised outreach and relationship building. 

Right now, brokers need to up their sales game. Most businesses will have faced some of the biggest challenges ever experienced over the last two years, so they’ll be out there shopping for insurance. In a hard market, the differentiating factor isn’t just price, it’s also what brokers have to offer their clients – that all-important value proposition stuff. Harnessing Customer Lifecycle Intelligence provides new opportunities to engage, establish credibility, and create new leads with well-timed, contextually relevant outreach that differentiates the broker from their competitors and increases their chances of securing that next meeting: 

• Engage with purpose – Insurance brokers are always consultative, not transactional, but this is more important during a hard market. It’s about building stronger relationships, being purpose-led in interactions with clients, and being proactive in caring for, and ideally one step ahead of, their needs. Vitally, brokers must harness intelligence to ensure they are always relevant to the client landscape, aligned to needs, and deliver on that all-important long-term value factor. 
• Adopt a consultative approach – trust and credibility are king for insurance brokers operating in a hard market. It has never been more important for insurance brokers to establish themselves as a trusted advisor to their clients. A deep understanding of a customer’s businesses will ensure a broker is better able to help them navigate the impact of market conditions, anticipate their needs, evaluate their risk exposures, and therefore present better submissions to underwriters. 
• Secure coverage – During hard insurance market conditions, it’s essential for brokers to prepare and present high-quality insurance submissions to an underwriter. It really is a case of the more information the better. Leveraging data-driven customer intelligence will make sure there are no knowledge gaps, and that the submission process is aligned to customer needs as well as the requirements of tougher risk-averse underwriting conditions. 
• Cultivate the existing book of business – operating in a hard market means being more efficient and keeping costs under control – doing more with less. Key to achieving this is for insurance brokers to generate more value from their existing book of business. Likewise, in a hard market clients will be expecting more from their broker. Upselling and cross-selling means that not only are policies per account more profitable, but it fosters a stronger sense of trust, establishing the broker as an advisor rather than simply a service provider. This in turn increases customer satisfaction and retention. 

What should brokers be doing differently during a hard market? 

96% of respondents stated that they have had to adapt their sales and renewal process, and our panellists had several nuggets of advice to share based on their own experience. 

Firstly, as mentioned previously, engage earlier in the process – both with clients and underwriters. Also make more use of resources, knowledge, and the expertise of your entire business – bring in your colleagues in risk management and those with sector specialisms to provide comfort for both clients and insurers. 

Secondly, diversify your offering. Insurance brokers have a unique opportunity to marry their fundamental understanding of commercial risks, and core strengths as trusted advisors to deliver a suite of risk management products and services – helping their clients reduce premiums, improve terms, and reduce the potential for claims. 

Finally, invest in improving the client experience through advances in technology and data analytics. The ultimate goal of every commercial insurance broker is to provide such a high level of service that clients simply cannot imagine doing business with anyone else. In today’s hard market keeping customers for life means doing more than simply selling insurance – they must consistently add value, engage regularly and contextually, be proactive in understanding needs, deliver tailored client experiences, and provide essential business-critical insights and specialised advice. 

When will things get better? 

Our panellists and respondents unanimously agreed it would take between 1-3 years to recover. As rates go up there will ultimately come a point when capacity providers see an opportunity to write profitable business. Likewise, after such a huge cleansing of insurer books, there will be a trigger moment in their appetite to write business again. 

But until then, brokers will need to continue working smarter… 

If you missed our webinar – don’t worry, simply watch at your leisure. 

FullCircl is on a mission to help brokers survive and thrive in hard market conditions 

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence by FullCircl brings together: 

•  Super-connected enriched-data and insights on companies and the officers inside them – FullCircl Business Information Graph and API 
• A configurable, low-code decision engine to screen and onboard in seconds based on your specific risk profiles – FullCircl Connect Rules Based Decision-Engine 
• Continuous monitoring and timely intelligence for proactive first engagement and remediation – FullCircl Engage Monitoring and Business Development Applications 

To help brokers: 

• Win the right customers - find, engage, and win the right customers for your business, products, and risk appetite. 
• Accelerate onboarding - fast, frictionless onboarding with automated AML, KYC and Credit checks that surpass both customer and compliance expectations. 
• Keep customers for life - Deliver proactive in-life customer care as new risks and opportunities emerge. 

All within one platform! 

Get in touch with one of our experts today.