Leading the field thanks to transparent administration
Broadening services
As a financial service provider, NSP Adviesgroep has successfully switched from the commission model to a broad range of services relating to financial advice. The agencies of more than 30 insurers form the basis of the service. On the basis of this range, the company can offer its customers products with competitive premiums and conditions supplemented by sound advice.
The basic administration of the insurance products has been included in the application. In addition to recording a policy, the system also supports the calculation of a premium on the basis of calculation rules.
Replace legacy with low-code
NSP Adviesgroep is the first party in the insurance sector that chose to compile software on the Novulo platform. In this sector, organizations often work with legacy software with limited adaptability and high maintenance costs. This makes it difficult to keep up with new market developments.
Novulo's low-code properties allow changes in the functionality and the corresponding data model of the policy administration to be implemented quickly and adequately. The forthcoming transparency on commission in non-life insurance and perhaps even a ban on it in the future, but also insurance for new products such as electric cars, for example, mean that it will be necessary to have access to agile software.
Subscription model
NSP Adviesgroep has successfully implemented the switch to a subscription model in its services in the Novulo application. For a periodic service fee, the company arranges all insurances in a specific area for private persons and companies. The marketing functionality in the Novulo application enables the company to send newsletters to different target groups with information about new developments and commercial offers.
Using an easily retrievable list, the company periodically calls subscribers to adjust their products or provide additional services. In this way, the Novulo software enables NSP Adviesgroep to mobilize all knowledge around the client.
Optimum freedom and possibilities
NSP Adviesgroep chose Novulo because the platform offers a lot of freedom and combines specific insurance functionality with proven components for marketing and e-commerce, for example. But it is mainly the optimally accessible information in the Novulo platform that proved an ideal basis for NSP Adviesgroep to expand its services. Henry Groote, office manager at NSP Adviesgroep, will be telling us more about this in this interview.
What change in the insurance market is relevant to your organization right now?
"An important factor in the transition was the ban on closing commissions for insurance products. In the past, as a broker you could provide specialist knowledge about life insurance free of charge, because part of the earnings model was based on the sales commission. Now that this commission is no longer an option for more and more products, the business model has changed dramatically.
NSP Adviesgroep now provides its own specialist knowledge as part of a broad financial offering that we market through memberships, among other things. The income from this type of service has largely made up for the loss of commission. Because we started expanding our offering long before the regulations actually came into force, we have been able to build a lead."
What has the Novulo software brought you in terms of business?
"In the nine years that we have been working with the Novulo platform, we have experienced particularly good support for this expansion. The Novulo platform offers a combination of solid policy administration functionality with ample possibilities for customer management, renewal and invoicing of insurance policies and the collection of premiums. On the one hand, these are essential basics that you need to have in order to run a good insurance administration. On the other hand, the software supports more generic functionality such as CRM and working with subscriptions and business partners. These are exactly the things you need in the software to actually realize the expansion of services.
Optimum accessibility to enable the data to be used for different purposes is very important in this respect. All our information is fully integrated and easily accessible in the Novulo software. This applies to customer data as well as to financial data from the portfolio. This major advantage allows us to make in-depth analyses of financial figures or to easily approach customers with a good and interesting proposal.
A good example of what this means can be found at the mortgage service point with which NSP Adviesgroep has been for some time. Using specific information from the mortgage portfolio, the Novulo software enables us to approach customers in a targeted manner. This selection of relevant customer information is easily retrieved from the system, without difficult selections, from a column structure and transferred to an export file. We are currently sending out weekly newsletters for two brand names with which NSP Adviesgroep operates in the market. This is producing excellent results.
As far as this functionality is concerned, Novulo comes out on top, as these types of mailings result in higher customer satisfaction. The newsletter includes, for example, an item on current mortgage rates. This is relevant for people who are considering a house purchase and then ask us to look at their mortgage. Showing something to a specific customer segment once a fortnight is essential.
This attention value pays off in more customers and the visibility is also good for existing subscribers. We are going to deploy this type of newsletter more intensively and expand it further. All kinds of filters in the software that can be applied to the customer base help us in this exercise. You can easily see which customer has a subscription or not, for example. An overview of the subscribers entitled to periodic contact is quickly drawn up. A colleague who handles this customer contact then calls these customers periodically."
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Why did you choose Novulo at the time?
"We got to know Novulo through a mutual relation. The Novulo platform offered a broad set of re-usable ERP and e-commerce components that offered good support for the key functionality around marketing insurance and other financial services. Insurance-specific aspects had not yet been added to the software at that time. We had talks with the management of Novulo and submitted a wish list of functionalities. A lot of work was then put into creating a basic package, which also included components focused on insurance administration. In August 2012, NSP Adviesgroep switched to this software."
What are Novulo's strengths and what could be improved?
"This is very diverse, because the Novulo platform offers a wide range of functionality with a lot of freedom and possibilities. This has enabled us to make great strides in a number of areas. The excellent access to information is exceptional, as there are many policy administrations in which this is much more difficult. You can export to Word, Excel or PDF from anywhere in the Novulo software. This export function makes it easy for our office to deal with the figures in depth.
On the other hand, there are improvements to be made in the application. Despite the fact that the data is easily accessible, NSP Adviesgroep needs more ready-to-use reports that give us more insight into the portfolio. This applies, for example, to the collection of information on insurance policies that we take out together with estate agents. When working together in the market, the knife cuts both ways and a brokerage fee is agreed upon. In the administration, we indicate whether insurance has been booked from such a cooperation. A standard report would allow us to report in more detail and more easily on the results of such cooperation. A request to create such an overview with the necessary graphs has been submitted to Novulo."
What developments will there be in the near future?
"We want to be in the front seat to stay ahead of our competitors and are therefore working hard on the future. There will be an obligation to apply commission transparency to non-life insurance as well. This means that the commission must be made transparent for the various insurance products. For the time being, from 2022 onwards, this will only apply prior to taking out new insurance, but we would not be surprised if in time this will also apply to existing insurance.
An option might be to charge an average commission for third-party liability cover for a car insurance policy, for example, and to communicate this amount to the customer. It would be best if this amount were registered with the product. The software must then be able to accommodate one or two different commission variants per coverage per customer or per product through adjustments to the software and the associated data model.
In this way, you as a broker can process this information properly and steer accordingly. If the commission on non-life products also disappears, you will have to find another way to earn money. Changing the business model is therefore a key issue in order to maintain the competitive edge."
What can Novulo do for you?
This example of NSP Adviesgroep shows that insurance solutions from Novulo can offer financial service providers a lot of added value. On the Novulo platform, for example, policy management and administration can be fully integrated with e-commerce functionality. As a result, customers and prospects can be approached with commercial propositions much better and in a more targeted manner, allowing a financial service provider to operate more efficiently and decisively. The software thus enables new business models that are better aligned with modern consumer preferences and the changed value chains in the insurance industry.
The Novulo platform includes many ready-made components that have proven themselves in practice. The adaptability and flexibility of the Novulo platform allows organizations to expand their application environment in a step-by-step, controlled manner and closely aligned with business strategy. For more information, please fill in this form to request a demo. A product specialist will then contact you. Thank you for your attention, and for your confidence in Novulo.