Interviews

"Turbocharging the distribution of insurance products" by Coherent and Seyna

Seyna and Coherent, two frontrunners in the insurtech space, analyse the key success factors and blockers that will define a successful distribution strategy

Turbocharging the distribution of insurance products

To kick us off, could you tell us why people have been thinking about insurtech the wrong way?

Stephen (Seyna): I feel the sector has long been about disruption. As if the ultimate goal was to replace what is already there. But the reality is that the scale and impact of the insurance sector is already huge, and beneficial to the world. It brings stability and safety to homes, companies, governments, etc. It is a great protective force as it is.

At Seyna, we believe it is all about partnering with all actors, including historic players, to take their impact to yet another level. We achieve that by helping them to reduce their time-to-market, continuously iterate on their insurance products or journeys and automate anything that distracts them from 100% customer-focus. 


John (Coherent): I agree with Stephen. In some ways, insurers need to disrupt but not be disrupted. At Coherent, we too believe that the end game is about enabling, not disrupting. The biggest success stories in insurance are  strong incumbents that partner with the right tech partners to modernize and create efficiencies. In France, we have seen success with April who is a good example of what we are talking about and has combined the best of both worlds through their acquisitions of Comparadise and Magnacarta. 

Ultimately, it is about working together to enable continuous innovation both on the business and IT fronts. In fact, by turning simple excel grids into stable APIs, Coherent is helping bring together business subject matter experts and IT in collaborative new ways that create efficiencies. This ranges from developing automated testing at scale on tech stacks to optimizing business models, to breaking down logic silos and enabling companies to adopt more modern services. We also leverage artificial intelligence that we’ve been developing with experience from processing over 200M formulas and creating over 1 billion API calls.


Insurance and brokerage business relies on high conversion rate in the subscription phase. What are the pains or blockers you observe that prevent brokers to maximize their conversion?

Stephen: In the competitive world of insurance, speed in providing final quotes to policyholders is not just an advantage; it's a necessity. Any delay reduces conversion rates. At Seyna, we're addressing this by integrating all the solutions to automate and speed up a broker’s work. Additionally, we place a strong emphasis on the analytics of customer journeys. It's about building, tracking, and fine-tuning these journeys to understand what attracts customers and what doesn’t. And of course, simplicity in the underwriting process is key - clear communication, streamlined design, and integrated payment solutions are all part of creating a seamless experience.

John : The current market demands more personalized and customized insurance solutions, and quickly. Hyper-automation and hyper-personalization are the way forward. The challenge lies in achieving this without introducing risks and also while keeping costs down. At Coherent, we empower our clients to automate and improve targeting for specific demographics efficiently, ensuring bespoke solutions at a lower cost. Moreover, in today's volatile market, the ability to rapidly adapt offers to match changing conditions, like an impending natural disaster, is crucial. Our technology enables insurers to update their offers swiftly and at scale.

Most of the time, subscription journeys are a combination of digital and sales motions. What do sales teams need to perform better?

Stephen: The key lies in having real-time and comprehensive information about customers' needs. This knowledge, coupled with the ability to respond quickly - ideally within ten minutes of a customer expressing interest - is what sets successful sales strategies apart. Furthermore, our sales representatives need the ability to collaborate effortlessly with all experts in-house to provide accurate services promptly. As a matter of fact, once we’ve established we’re the right solution for them, we then give our leads direct access to all experts and decision makers to ensure maximum efficiency.

John: For sales teams, time is literally money. They can't afford to spend it on learning new solutions or processes. We believe in enhancing the productivity of existing tools, like Excel, so that everything a salesperson needs is readily available. This includes up-to-date, highly targeted offers with accurate pricing. Additionally, by embedding modern services throughout the organization, we ensure that sales teams have rapid access to necessary information, including special offers and promotions.

Seyna and Coherent, together can offer a game changing solution to boost brokers' revenue. Can you explain?

Stephen: Seyna’s mission is to centralize on a single platform everything brokers need to protect their customers and grow their business. Integrating a pricer is one of brokers’ worst pains. Embedding Coherent’s solution into our SaaS platform will allow brokers to benefit from the full suite of services, with no development, nor technological maintenance costs. This will drastically decrease brokers’ tech investments time-to-market.

John: Our partnership is all about speed to market and continuous innovation. Brokers will benefit from faster availability of new subscription journeys through our hyper-automation. Seyna and Coherent together provide highly personalized and up-to-date customer subscription journeys. Additionally, we address the critical aspect of regulatory control in France by maintaining an immutable audit trail for every transaction, ensuring compliance and transparency.

How will the Seyna | Coherent partnership develop over time?

Stephen: We are ambitious about transforming the product launch experience for brokers. Starting with a pilot project, our goal for the next year is a full integration of our solutions, significantly enhancing the broker experience.

John: As innovative leaders in the European insurance market, our partnership is set to rapidly transform the industry. Our shared vision and experience in overcoming challenges faced by over 100 top insurers position us uniquely to empower brokers, helping them achieve their goals and succeed in a competitive landscape.

We are both ready to take broker orders, today.

Related article