First Central is on the brink of a major breakthrough in the UK motor insurance sector.
It has emerged from the pandemic stronger and more agile than ever, and its innovative technology and dynamic partnership-building is now about to pay dividends.
Andrew Eade, Head of AD Strategy and Fulfilment, First Central, said, “First Central is pretty ambitious. We’ve operated under the radar for a long time but have grown progressively and are now starting to get noticed.
“We’re moving pretty quickly and that’s being driven partly by the level of integration we’ve got with our partners, which has been achieved over the last six months. Another insurer might still be in committee, but we had a plan, a vision, and we have partnered the right people to deliver it.”
Andrew was speaking at ARC360’s Gaining Ground Together event, which was held at The Manufacturing Technology Centre last month.
Sponsored by GT Motive and supported by ARC360 Corporate Partners: Solera Audatex; BASF; BMS; CAPS; Copart; EMACS; Entegral; Enterprise; Innovation Group; Mirka; Nationwide Vehicle Recovery Assistance; and S&G; along with Partners: Repairify; The Green Parts Specialists; Indasa; and Prasco UK; and Associate Partners: Gemini ARC; Trend Tracker; and Thatcham Research, Gaining Ground Together saw some of the industry’s most influential players come together to share their insights and experiences around key issues such as ESG, the supply chain, customer satisfaction and training.
Culture
The day concluded with a one-to-one interview with Andrew, who discussed First Central’s ambition, culture and vision.
He continued, “We had a vision four years ago and are now bringing that through. The vision is simple: to provide a simple claims journey and to deliver on our promises to customers We’ll do whatever we can to achieve that.”
But while partnerships and greater integration are fundamental – “We work in silos, we’re afraid of change, but if you don’t change you don’t evolve” – so too is company culture, and Andrew believes this is another area where First Central is a little different.
He said, “I came to First Central seven years ago. We have our own culture here and it is very important that people fit within it because we make quite a lot of decisions out of the back of it. We have to feel like we can work with them and they can work with us. The culture very much comes from the top so everyone is aligned with the same set of values. One of those values is ambition; we take ownership of what we do. We are also agile in thought and action, and we look to collaborate.
“I know everyone talks about partnerships, but I don’t think a lot of people really deliver it. There is a level of measurement from insurers to suppliers, they impose rigid KPIs and SLAs, and that needs to change completely because repairing a vehicle has changed completely.
“We want to be easy to deal with, we want to develop working relationships that are simple and beneficial. To us that means being flexible and open-minded, so nobody here is unapproachable and there are no bad ideas. We actually have a few things going forward that might be beneficial for repairers from a cost and estimating point of view, so the door is always open.”
Technology
Another ambition of First Central is to increase its policy count without increasing its head count.
Andrew believes it is possible to achieve this by employing the right people and then marrying them with the right technology. He explained how First Central has now developed its own claims system which enables it to tailor solutions for handlers and set pre-defined parameters to accelerate claims decisions and improve accuracy.
“If we want to build a specific journey for a specific model or make a total loss decision around a certain type of damage, we could do that – we could do it tomorrow and then switch it off the next day. We’re looking to build more and more AI-enabled decision-trees to drive the right kind of decisions.”
He concluded, “We need to put the right things in the right places for the right people to get the right outcomes.”
