Martin McLachlan, Managing Director, Polaris UK Limited
Polaris was established in 1993 by insurers and brokers as a collaborative, not-for-profit venture to encourage the adoption of new technologies, with the aim of delivering a more efficient and cost-effective broker channel.
Today, Polaris serves over 100 clients, and while its role remains the same, the type of client it serves and the range of technology solutions it supports has grown.
Polaris Managing Director Martin McLachlan explains: “Our original focus was the broker channel, and our clients were insurers and the broker platform providers. That community and its profile have grown over the years. Polaris Market Standards and ProductWriter are also used in the direct and corporate channels today, and by a myriad of new clients such as insurtech start-ups, data providers, aggregators and MGAs. Today we estimate over 70 per cent of general insurance quotes in the UK are powered by ProductWriter and, by default, using the Market Standards.”
Just as Polaris’s client base has changed so has the company’s product offerings. McLachlan adds: “Our imarket proposition, which delivers real-time connectivity for commercial insurers and brokers, has seen exponential growth in recent years and goes from strength to strength. We also recently launched our Good Customer Outcomes service. This reviews insurance products and the platforms they are sold on to help find improvements that would benefit customers buying online. And we are now in the process of launching our latest service, the Polaris Sandbox.”
McLachlan continues: “Sandbox is deliberately designed to allow new technologies and propositions to be road-tested in an environment that duplicates the current broker channel e-trading model. It is designed with start-ups and insurtech companies in mind, where getting the attention of market incumbents is incredibly challenging. Sandbox helps to demonstrate to existing market players that new technologies and propositions can work, technically – therefore de-risking decisions by insurers and brokers to trial new propositions”.
The Polaris Sandbox will be launched in Q1 2019.
Contact Polaris UK Limited to find out how we can help you to get your insurtech proposal to market faster. Polaris e-trading Standards are proven and will enable you to more easily build a proposition that can communicate and work with insurer and broker platforms. In addition, the Polaris Sandbox, which emulates the existing e-trading eco-system, will enable you to test your proposition in a “real world” environment much sooner in its development cycle.