Overview
The property and casualty insurance industry continues to navigate dramatic changes through the forces of technology, regulation, structural overcapacity and challenged investment returns. Across mass market and niche areas, and across personal, commercial and specialist lines, organizations throughout the insurance value chain are grappling with the implications of these changes ― from existential considerations to digital transformation, changing consumer behaviors, evolution of distribution models and industry consolidation, an increasing regulatory squeeze, participation choices in various stages of a changing value chain, and a renewed focus on customer-centered thinking.
In this challenging environment, our clients turn to us to provide clarity and strategic support in their search for both growth and business resilience.
How we help
Our experience spans the insurance value chain. We work with brokers/agents, MGAs, insurers, reinsurers, claims management companies, and technology and distribution platforms. Clients range in size from small insurtech players through to the largest global P&C insurers.
Our experienced team offers profound, holistic and deep understanding of the key business challenges and value levers in insurance and works with senior leadership teams, boards and investors to:
- Provide certainty about their participation strategies: Clients turn to us to navigate uncertainty and for a bespoke assessment of where they should play and grow ― geographically, in a value chain, across customer segments or across product categories.
The questions we answer are often unique for our clients and their circumstances and include everything from “What should our product portfolio be and should we continue to operate in the personal lines motor space?,” “Where do we need to be located to protect our origination and grow our business?” and “Should we be a multiniche player or a mass market player?” through to “Who could be the winners and losers as the industry evolves, and what does this mean for the value chain and for the strategy of our business?”
- Help them win: Clients appreciate our distinctive and value-driven analytical approach, which complements our deep sector knowledge. We bring these to bear in helping our clients win and grow in their respective markets through optimizing their distribution strategy, helping them improve their pricing or customer origination or retention capabilities, creating or enhancing their products and propositions, and improving their competitive positioning to gain share in low-growth insurance markets.
Investors, in particular, look to us to help identify the growth levers and uncover the potential that lies within insurance businesses in which they seek to invest, and help realize the potential in their portfolio companies.
- Bring their strategies to life: Clients look to L.E.K. to help provide pragmatic support in aligning their business and people toward a common goal. Our work in this space involves definition and implementation of target operating models, guidance on the role of technology within insurance businesses, development and alignment of incentive mechanisms for front-line staff (brokers/sales teams), and unlocking of opportunities for performance improvement as business models evolve.
Examples of our work
To learn more about how we help clients create value, please refer to these case examples:
- Helped renew an international personal lines insurer’s position in the U.K. market and return to significant profitability within 18 months by identifying and focusing the business on customer ownership initiatives, improvements in its technical pricing capabilities and a claims improvement program.
- Helped a leading personal lines broker through a comprehensive business transformation program involving optimizing its channel footprint, improving its customer management sophistication and updating its operating model to be fit for purpose in today’s competitive direct insurance markets.
- Helped a leading industry-owned insurer organization identify the key trends in electronic trading for commercial insurance through the value chain and create strategies that helped create a sustainable future.
- Assisted a Lloyd’s and London market insurer in revisiting and improving its distribution strategy to grow and protect its business flows across its principal business areas, including commercial, specialty and reinsurance.
- Assisted a global claims management company in revisiting its international ambitions in terms of both service provision beyond its core loss-adjusting skill set and the appropriate geographical footprint to position it for sustainable long-term growth.
- Assisted a leading private equity-owned insurance technology provider in improving its commercial effectiveness, specifically in sales and distribution. Our work involved detailed customer segmentation and led to substantial improvements in revenue per key customer and more efficient service approaches to lower-tier customers.
- Unlocked value for a leading specialist insurance distributor by segmenting its customer base and discovering the distribution of customer lifetime value. Our guidance helped the client redeploy its marketing and operational efforts toward the greatest potential accounts.
