Building a sustainable insurance business through COVID

The uncertainty and effects of the pandemic on people’s lives, business and the economy, have been catastrophic and will continue to affect the world for some time.

The insurance industry has been greatly affected as seen in key coverage around travel and business interruption.

Consequently, we have seen extreme pressure on sales teams due to reduced business activity and lockdowns that meant face to face meetings with clients were not possible.

DEMONSTRATING OUR PURPOSE

Despite the negative impacts, the pandemic has also given the insurance industry an opportunity to demonstrate its purpose, commitment to clients and the value it can provide to businesses.

IQumulate is an intermediated business which distributes its product through insurance brokers across Australia and New Zealand.

Our key stakeholders, broker partners and their clients play a critical role in ensuring that businesses have the right level of insurance cover to protect their assets and manage risk.

INCREASE IN DEMAND

We’ve seen an overall increase in the demand for our services as more businesses look to find ways to preserve cash and ensure adequate coverage.

Spreading out their payments over a longer period is a sensible option that more businesses are clearly considering.

With the pandemic escalating in March 2020, our Business Continuity Plan kicked into gear, giving our business the operational agility to easily move to a remote setup.

This allowed our team to move seamlessly to a remote working environment while continuing to provide the highest level of service to our broker partners.

RESILIENCE ACROSS SECTORS

In terms of impacts, we front all sectors of the economy and have been working through numerous requests for assistance from businesses facing hardship and possible default.

We set up a dedicated customer service team and looked to work with our broker partners to implement strategies that would be in the best interests of customers and therefore provide peace of mind.

This has put a heavy burden on various departments within our business, but I am proud of the way that the entire team has banded together and shown resilience over the last nine months and supported customers and each other.

CLEAR SENSE OF PURPOSE

As a business, we have a clear sense of purpose and have remained focused on delivering our strategy, while  making adjustments in an ever-changing environment.

Our mission is to build a sustainable business for the benefit of:

• our people and their careers
• the brokers we service
• the people and businesses who benefit from using our product

As the lockdowns across Australia and New Zealand start to ease, this will allow us to re-engage with our business partners.

FACING SYSTEMIC THREATS

While we often reflect on some of these changes, what’s also clear, is that systemic threats such as climate change, cyber-attacks and pandemics are something we will need to face in a world marked by instability.

I strongly believe that an agile business that is able to respond to changes, not only remains resilient, but is able to continue to meet the needs of its staff, business partners and ultimately, its customers.