The real advantage of straight-through processing in the Lloyd’s market

Managing general agents who can place small business coverage digitally through the Lloyd’s market are at a competitive advantage over MGAs using traditional paper-based processes, an insurtech CEO suggests.

“We are one of the very few MGAs that has straight through-processing at all,” said Jeff McCann, CEO of Apollo Insurance Solutions Ltd., in a recent interview.

With its technology, Apollo aims to cut down the amount of time it takes a broker to process an application. Apollo Exchange offers Canada’s brokers access to multiple insurance providers, with hundreds of classes of insurance.

Apollo announced on May 28 that it is offering an office insurance package on the Apollo Exchange. Two days earlier Apollo announced two packages — one for building maintenance and renovation contractors and the other for car detailing and accessories installation. All three of those packages are placed in the Lloyd’s market.

With its status as a Lloyd’s coverholder, commercial clients can get a quote, pay their premium and get their policy issued digitally with no human interaction, McCann said in an interview. “The cool thing is that because it is digital, we are able to iterate and improve, collect feedback from brokers and collect feedback from end customers.”

Apollo can use this feedback to make changes on specific insurance products to policy limits endorsements and coverages, as well as to questions the underwriter asks the client.

“If Question 7 is really confusing — if it creates a drop-off point — how do we make that more user-friendly for the customer? If you have something that is paper-based, a [portable document format, PDF] application, nobody is changing those questions to make them more clear, and that is something we can focus on,” said McCann.

With Lloyd’s coverage, Apollo is “largely” targeting clients who have fewer than 100 employees. “The ability for us to become the ‘everything store’ for smaller transactional insurance is our goal,” he said.

Apollo announced in April it has coverholder status with Lloyd’s of London. With that, Apollo is aiming to let small to mid-sized commercial clients get a policy from the Lloyd’s market through the Apollo Exchange.

Apollo has about 2,000 broker partners. There is no code and no technology — other than internet access — that a broker or syndicate needs to deal with Apollo, said McCann. So the broker provides advice to the clients, the syndicate provides the capacity “and lets us do the heavy lifting on being a tech company.”

Feature image via iStock.com/ipopba