Marcus Verrall, chief technology officer (CTO) and founder of Insurance Australia Group’s (IAG’s) dedicated motor insurance arm, ROLLiN’ Insurance, has revealed that the greenfields innovator has ramped up traffic flow to 100 per cent on its rejigged quote experience, one month after its pilot deployment.

Since its initial rollout in early July (when it was open to just 5 per cent of site traffic), ROLLiN’s new quote experience has resulted in a 10 per cent increase in quote conversion over the old system, Verrall revealed during a panel discussion at FST Media’s Future of Financial Service Sydney, 2023 conference, a result he said of increased trust in the process.

The new quote flow was “purposefully launched” in July with missing features, ensuring feedback could be sought from customers on this early iteration. Traffic flow was incrementally ramped up to 20 per cent, and then 50 per cent upon a second update once more features were added, he said, and the tech team was confident in the process.

This new flow flips the traditional online quotes process on its head, Verrall said, presenting a price quote to applicants in under 10 questions.

“In the old system, you [the customer] would go to a form, you’d fill out, say, 35 questions and you’d get given a price.

“We flipped that around, so we get the customer the price in about nine questions. If they’re happy with the price and happy with the product that’s described, they can then go through, submit the underwriting questions and fill out [personal details] and so on.”

He noted that customers, particularly those interacting with a relatively new brand like ROLLiN’ (launched by IAG in 2021 as a dedicated motor insurance arm for younger drivers), are more sceptical when prices are presented late in the quote process.

“One of the main data points that we saw was really customers want to see the price when it comes to insurance, and particularly for an unknown brand,” Verrall said.

The new quote flow also supports the increased personalisation possibilities of ROLLiN’s product offerings, increasing complexity in back-end processing, but enabling more granular customisation of policies.

This system involves the adoption of a ‘many-to-many’ data model, where more than one record in one category can be related to more than one record in another category. This allows for a multitude of possibilities for individuals to tailor their policies, and therefore quotes, to their driving habits.

“You can have multiple cars under the one policy, with multiple drivers,” Verrall said. “[For example], you can have Driver A only allowed to drive Car B, while Driver B can drive Car A, B, and C.

“That unique feature adds complexity but at the same time gives us the ability to personalise towards particular customer types.

Verrall added: “That balance between using the data to make decisions but then using that same research data to enhance your product has been critical for us to get to this point and certainly into the future.

“It’s what we’re looking to do more of to really be that experimentation engine for testing out new products.”