Ancillary Insurance – A View From...

Ancillary Insurance – A View From The Top

I have recently interviewed several Insurance Executives to discuss their business, including key achievements, some of the challenges they’ve faced, lessons learned and future market developments.

Today’s interview is with James Blyth, Managing Director, Coplus.

Coplus has been a successful TPA and Ancillaries provider for over 30 years, developing knowledge and understanding that helps their partners provide competitive, quality service to customers. Based in the centre of Norwich they employ 100+ people and are open to their customers 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Coplus is part of the handl Group who deliver insurance, health and legal services to many large insurers.

James has overall responsibility for the financial performance of Coplus. He has more than twenty years of experience within the business, first as Finance Manager then promoted to General Manager in 2011, Operations Director in 2018, then Managing Director of the Claims Division in 2019 before being promoted to Managing Director in early 2022.

How would you describe Coplus to someone who doesn’t know the business?

I would describe Coplus as a best-in-class Ancillary Insurance and TPA wholesaler, with a comprehensive product suite covering a wide range of Insurance types, such as motor, household. lifestyle and commercial, available to partners. (Brokers/Insurers/Affinity Groups)

What sets us apart is our ethos of delivering commercial benefit to our partners without compromising excellent value to their customers. We achieve this through the autonomy and flexibility we have in capacity, design, manufacturing and distribution as well as the continuous development of our products via the data we capture from product performance.

How have you achieved your success to date?

In 2014, Coplus was acquired and became part of the Handl Group. With the acquisition came huge ambition to accelerate Coplus’ growth in the ancillary market. Leading to significant investment in both our people and our technology.

With this backing and our approach of investing time in understanding both our existing and new partner’s needs, we developed products and services to compliment those needs which has really helped with not only winning business but also retaining.

This has led to significant growth, delivering an increase in our policy count from 1.5 million to 5 million policyholders.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced?

Coplus has always tried to be a solution provider as well as a product provider, many challenges our partners face are around the cost of change both commercially and operationally. Coplus’ proposition is to reduce the impact to our partners by utilising the benefit of our capacity buying power as well as our vast experience in implementation and seamless integration.

Internally the ongoing regulatory scrutiny and requirements of Ancillary Products could be seen as a challenge and disruptive to BAU. However, we have always doubled down in our investment in compliance and governance. Every year we set objectives to remain ahead of the regulatory curve. Our own business values very much align with the FCA framework and in most cases when new FCA guidance comes in we are already prepared.

How do you see the ancillary Insurance market developing over the next few years?

As I mentioned, Ancillary Insurance is being looked at more and more. How it is sold, who it is being sold to, what value the product is providing to the consumer and how those products are serviced at claim stage.

If they haven’t already Ancillary Providers need to make sure controls are in place to demonstrate all those things and beyond the standard metrics set out by the FCA.

This can only be achieved by making sure there is comprehensive data available across the sales and service chain. Coplus prides itself on our transparent relationships both with the underwriter and our partners. This provides assurances to all parties that products are delivering value and if the data tells us different what measure are in place to improve.

What are the future opportunities for growth?

Educating and providing access to a greater number of ancillary products to consumers is a great opportunity for growth. When offering ancillary products as part of the customer journey for a main policy, Brokers and Insurers are limited to the number they either choose or can offer consumers. Creating spaces where you can market and sell additional or new products is a huge opportunity to leverage and commercialise customer bases.

Coplus has identified this as an opportunity for not only Brokers and Insurers but also Affinity Groups or anyone with a large customer base, and developed ‘Yourspace’, a white-labelled click and buy platform which houses additional products that can be purchased using a simple link to customers.

How do you see Ai and advances in technology impacting the future growth and success of the business?

Even in the last 5 years, technology and automation has come such a long way in the Insurance sector. In the claims space AI has delivered huge efficiencies to the customer experience and is now prevalent in distribution such as discounted Insurance based on driver behaviour.

The distribution of Ancillary products is behind the curve but there is so much opportunity in selling products that has the greatest value to the consumer utilising AI and based on the consumer’s personal profile.

Coplus has access to huge amounts of data, not only distribution data but also consumer feedback via our TPA, we continue to scrutinise this data to understand consumers better and assist our partners in increasing Ancillary Product penetration.

Right International are market leading recruiters to the MGA, Claims, and Insurance sector.

If you are looking to add to your team now or in the near future or are considering your next career move, please contact myself or one of the team.

All the best,

Gary Pike

Founder & MD Right International

garypike@rightinternational.com