Michał Giel: You talked a lot about back-end systems that most often remain invisible for the clients. But what about sales? Today, insurance is to a great degree sold in a traditional way.
John Reynolds: That is true. In the early 2000s there were many attempts to establish insurance sales portals in the internet and almost all failed quite soon. But many things have changed. Today, insurance agents work on computers and their offering is processed digitally. Twenty years ago, insurance agents did not have computers at all. Everything was processed on paper.
We should not forget the power of price comparison websites. In UK, one third of new business is generated by online brokers. They were designed and created 20 years ago, now they have become powerful players in the markets. Some of them have become market makers. Even if clients don’t buy their motor insurance in the internet, they still check the price before they ask their agent.
Aggregators have changed the insurance industry also from a technical point of view. Insurers have set up systems that are able to serve price comparison websites very quickly. Speed has become important in the industry. It is still a challenge for insurers.
Michał Giel: After you have founded Sollers in August 2000, you worked for companies in many different industries, health care, telecommunication, and even online gambling. Why did Sollers focus on the insurance industry?
John Reynolds: We had difficult times when we started Sollers. At that time, the dot.coms boom of the late 1990ies ended up in crash. As a startup we had hard times to find clients under these circumstances. But we were flexible, and we somehow muddled through. Quite soon we realized that there was a huge demand in technological innovation in the insurance industry.
In the beginning we worked in my apartment. We started to review business processes, operating models, strategies, and IT roadmaps. We had a multimedia company among our clients, a medical company, an internet provider. Alongside with this we started our first project in the insurance industry.
There was a huge disparity between the visions of managers had of completely automated insurance companies and the problems they had to solve during that time. Insurers work in complex structures and this has become even more true today. There is much know-how needed to support these structures. There was much to do twenty years ago, but there is still a lot of work to be done if insurers want to catch up with other industries.
Michał Giel: In 2011 you decided to adapt agility. What is your experience with that?
John Reynolds: We decided to switch to agile principles because we experienced that they help to solve problems. In large scale IT projects, there are many unforeseen and maybe unforeseeable factors. If they are not addressed properly, the project will fail. Traditional “waterfall” project methods tend to ignore this fact.
We have introduced agile working principles in all parts of Sollers Consulting. From our experience, especially young employees enjoy this working style. It makes it easier for us to avoid siloed structures, retain flexibility and to scale up.
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