Bedford Insurance Group

CDL

Bedford Insurance is a leading independent insurance broker with ambitious targets for continued growth; it offers competitive rates from a panel of some of the best known insurance companies in the UK.

With online sales its primary channel for new business, Bedford sought a solution to address the growing problem of quote manipulation, whereby consumers generate multiple insurance quotations, with key risk details, such as occupation, 'tweaked' between quote requests in order to obtain a lower insurance premium.

Bedford wanted to harness technology to identify potentially fraudulent customers before the point of sale. This would enable it to avoid high risk customers and demonstrate to insurer partners that they are taking action to develop better quality business. In turn, this would enable it to negotiate better rates, driving growth and competitive advantage in an extremely price-driven sector.

Bedford turned to CDL's Hummingbird Syndicate, an anti-fraud solution launched to bring together a number of major insurance brands and collaboratively harness technology to combat quote manipulation. By pooling quotation data, members benefit from a market-wide view of consumer activity and by sharing supporting infrastructure, they gain significant economies of scale.

Hummingbird Syndicate enables users to identify and respond to suspicious patterns of behaviour in real time. Cloud-hosted using Amazon Web Services (AWS), it is highly resilient and scalable, and its ability to analyse the huge volumes of data associated with hundreds of thousands of daily quote requests and deliver insights to inform immediate action makes it invaluable in the fight against fraud.

Boasting an average response time of under 100 milliseconds, including external API calls, and 99.99999% availability, it is a 'faster than fast' solution, analysing quote requests across all channels to deliver insight and inform actions prior to the point of a policy sale.

With Differentiated Software Partner status in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN), CDL has a strong track record in deploying Hummingbird on AWS.

AWS global deployment options are leveraged to ensure resilience and data security. These include Multiple Availability Zones and the Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) to enable applications to be run in a managed cluster of Amazon instances, as well as Amazon S3 object storage to give access to the same highly scalable, reliable and fast data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites.

AWS PrivateLink is used to securely connect a customer from Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to Hummingbird VPC endpoint services.

Its ultra-fast performance enables sophisticated matching routines, allowing Syndicate members to detect when consumers have altered personal details across quotes and prevent fraudulent applications. Due to the granular level of the data analysed, Hummingbird also significantly reduces false positives, separating genuine quote consumer alterations from suspicious behaviour patterns.

User-driven business rules determine actions taken when suspicious behaviour is detected, including flagging cases for post-sale validation or declining to quote altogether, and Hummingbird integrates real-time look-ups to external data sources and machine learning to derive greater insight.

In the first 30 days after launch, Hummingbird Syndicate insights showed three million consumers obtained over 15 million quotes. This data highlighted that people routinely made changes to a variety of risk factors between quote requests, with 27% of people varying their annual mileage, 23% their occupation and 16% their NCB (No Claims Bonus) details. Over 20,000 people made NCB changes involving a variance of nine years. Analysis of this data revealed invaluable industry insights, including people most likely to prove fraudulent (those making multiple detail changes across four risk areas).

Bedford Insurance Group reported the following business impacts from Syndicate membership:

• Savings associated with the ability to decline toxic risks at point of quote, reducing cancellation costs
• Time savings gained with insights enabling more targeted post-sale validation
• Average number of days from point of sale to policy issue reduced from 43 days to 18 days, significantly improving customer service
• Better quality new business projected to translate into reduced insurer loss ratios (reducing application fraud typically reduces claims fraud)
• Preferential insurer deals attracting additional new business and enabling lower premiums to be passed on to genuine consumers

"We are using Hummingbird Syndicate insights to enhance our quotation and policy validation processes, enabling these be far more focused and effective. It also provides our insurer partners with confidence that we are investing in measures to prevent application fraud and generate higher quality business.

"Investing in cutting edge technologies, such as Hummingbird, has enabled us to secure competitive advantage, which has translated into considerable business growth. The solution has given us the ability to decline toxic risk at point of quote and reduce our policy issue period considerably, bringing significant cost savings.

"By working closely with our insurer partners to share this insight, we have been able to combat online manipulation, whilst passing on savings to genuine customers."

Mark Hare, Managing Director at Bedford Insurance Group

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