The issue
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Shrinking customer base
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13 legacy books and numerous policy variants causing customer and staff confusion
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Operationally complex to manage – high cost to serve
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Existing proposition and pricing created trigger points for customer exit
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Customers not segmented by value
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No differentiated renewal or save strategies
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Not pricing for risk or maximised value retention
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Poor customer journey: passed from function to function, advisors not empowered
Solution
- Designed and executed a pricing, product and service migration of all policyholders to one new modular product
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- Developed new proposition which drove retention of high value customers and higher return from lower value customers
- Built in upgrade/downgrade ‘right-size’ choices to mitigate competitor switching
- Created pricing engine enabling all business to move to NCD-based policies and set renewal premiums to optimise gross margin
- Cut expected IT lead time to launch from 12 to 3 months
- Changed customer communications and management processes to de-risk customer disruption and loss
- Engaged Legal and regulator on ‘automatic renewal’ plans throughout
- Piloted the transition on 2 highest lapse-risk books to ensure error-free process and no adverse increase in lapse rates
The results
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Exceeded the £20Mpa gross margin improvement target
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Reduced customer loss by 25%
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Improved operating cost ratio from 30% to 16% with greatly improved IT flexibility
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Excellent customer and FSA feedback
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Successfully rolled out from personal to SME & Group schemes
