A growing group
Gary Humphreys is an experienced insurance professional, enjoying almost four decades in the industry. He is co-founder of the Markerstudy Group of Companies which commenced trading in 2001. In 2018 MGA Markerstudy Insurance Services Limited was created, and is now the largest MGA in the UK. Gary spoke to Modern Insurance about dual pricing and collaboration to prevent fraud As we move into 2020, how important will price Q be for the customer? What other major buying considerations will customers have? In the insurance space, price is always going to A be the main concern for the consumer, perhaps even more so in 2020. Most insurance starts life on an
aggregator and customers are used to price being the main consideration. The way the market has been led has created a general consumer belief that pretty much everything on the aggregator is the same product, so price becomes the determining factor. With the upward pressure on pricing, particularly in motor, and the potential challenges coming around dual pricing from the FCA, this could lead to an increase in new business prices. stance does Markerstudy take on the recent QWhat debates on dual pricing for customers? We’ve always taken the view that loyal customers A should never be unnecessarily penalised for the benefit of writing more new business. Consequently, it’s
something we’ve never been an exponent of. Most of our business has always been intermediated and the street pricing has always been in the hands of the broker. But with our direct portfolio, which was largely through the Geoffrey brand, our price promise says that a renewing customer will never pay more than the equivalent new business price.
Collaboration is vital, do you foresee significant Q advances in and beyond 2020 in the sharing of data, particularly in the fight against fraud? And what do you believe is required?
I agree wholeheartedly with the concept of A collaboration wherever possible. We do share information, particularly to counter fraud in both the
buying and claims processes. One of the current challenges is with the advent of much tougher legislation around data in the form of GDPR. It becomes more difficult to share data with certain parties where there could be a benefit in combating fraud. This is definitely one of the areas that we need to find a common platform to share data in a more intelligent way without breaching GDPR guidelines.
the challenge to deliver speed for the consumer, with QIna high-level validation process, can the two co-exist? Absolutely they can! We have a very high level of A pre-validation before we even provide a price, which all happens in fractions of a second. And with current technology it’s easily achievable.
What is the role of collaboration in counter fraud Q and how does Markerstudy work with its partners to prevent fraud? The partners we work with are mainly the larger A intermediaries. We have data sharing agreements which cover fraudulent behaviour, either proven in the
past or suspected, so that we can protect our insurer partners from known committers of fraud – both policy fraud and claims fraud. And as fraud gets ever more sophisticated, collaboration becomes proportionately more relevant and important, because as you close one door to one fraud another is opened. The hot topic at the moment is identity theft and it’s a growing problem. The criminal fraternity uses it to access legitimate insurance so they don’t have issues such as being stopped by routine police patrols. And while that doesn’t necessarily cost the industry money in terms of false motor insurance claims, obviously the perpetrators of identity theft are using it to roam freely and commit other types of crime. These crimes may or may not have an insurance impact but as an industry, both morally and for the benefit of society, we need to be able to prevent that happening because it has a much wider impact than just insurance crime. Many of the other ‘traditional’ methods of fraud have been negated by actions taken by the industry and by the more sophisticated use of data. This has driven criminals down the path of identity theft to obtain what appears on the surface to be normal insurance cover. By the use of data, the industry has detected those repeat offenders who would make exaggerated claims and multiple claims for the same loss with different insurers. Those loopholes have now been closed. What we’re currently seeing is the more serious criminal using identity theft to keep out of the eyes of the law, and this has brought a more serious element of fraud into the
What regulators don’t want to do is take an action that’s going to lead to increased pricing
24 Carpenters Group Supplement
