Insurance Australia Group (IAG) reported strong profits on Wednesday. Like QBE Insurance Group last week, the trans-Tasman insurance giant reported FY25 net profits of more than 20%. Insurance Business asked Jarrod Hill (main picture), who leads IAG’s Intermediated Insurance Australia (IIA) division, about recent changes impacting brokers and how they contributed to the improved financial results.
He said the main improvements for brokers - that are now being seen in financial results – are in the claims area, technology uplifts and the overall service proposition. Hill cited his division’s growth of 6.3%, continued uplift in profit and an insurance margin of 12%.
He said his firm’s improvements can also be seen in broker net promoter scores (NPS).
“Across the board, we saw strong NPS uplift, particularly in claims,” said Hill.
In the claims area, he said last year’s launch of a fast-track claims capability supported by artificial intelligence (AI) helped to significantly shorten the claims handling process involving brokers.
“We deployed some AI, which was mainly used to support our claims handlers and get information to them quicker,” said the CEO. “We also deployed a claims portal so brokers could enter claims by the portal.”
Changes were also made to IAG’s end-to-end process flow on claims, he said, focusing initially on property claims. “So speed of claim and the ease of access in delivering the claim to us have led to a real uplift in our claims with our brokers,” said Hill.
He said these claims handling improvements have also allowed the firm to modify how it deals with nat cat events and get loss assessors and builders into these events “significantly quicker” than before. Hill referred to ex-Cyclone Alfred and said the new AI-driven claims process allowed his firm to “really execute on those claims [from brokers and their clients] far more efficiently than we had in the past.”
IB asked how much quicker? “For claims that drop into the fast track of that process - which tend to be claims under $20,000 for property - that's down to, on average, 10 days from notification to finalisation, which generally includes a claims payment,” he said.
Technology improvements are also having an impact on broker satisfaction and financial results. Hill said the launch in May this year of CGU’s Padlock, a property owners’ package, on IAG’s new Commercial Enterprise Platform (CEP), had been “hugely successful.”
“We doubled the new business we wrote,” said Hill “We've got a lot of brokers wanting to sign up now, so a really good start to deployment on the new system.”
The other main improvements for brokers, he said, are in his firm’s “service proposition” at the front end and “all the way through our business.” Hill said this is setting up a more service-focused culture. “That's everything fundamental, like calling first before sending an email – so those fundamentals of service and trying to uplift them,” he said. “We've still got a way to go but you know, progress has been made.”
Are you a broker who works with IAG? What improvement have you noticed? What still needs to change? Please tell us below.
