“Our strategy is to be the best and biggest digital insurer in the UK.” That’s a bold statement to make but that ambition is backed by an even bolder transformation strategy that has been in the works for the past few years, according to Hastings Direct’s CIO Sasha Jory.
With the majority (90%) of its business coming from price comparison websites, it’s key that the insurer has platforms, policies and processes that are fit for purpose.
“Over the last four-and-a-half years, we have gone through a significant transformation of our business. From what I would describe an old world kind of tin to modern, fully cloud-enabled at the core,” Jory says.
“Part of that journey has very much been with our partner Snowflake, getting us on to the Snowflake AI Data Cloud and also [our partnership] with Microsoft. We are an Azure shop so we're in the Microsoft cloud as well.”
These partnerships have been absolutely key in trying to not modernize but also try to keep an eye on future trends and make investments that will work going forward, according to Jory.
“We've modernized our tooling dramatically and taken up lots and lots of legacy capabilities and legacy tooling to be ready for the modern world. In the last four- and-a-half years, technology has moved at such a pace, it's almost impossible to keep up with all of it. That's probably why our partnership with people like EY, Snowflake and Microsoft is so critical,” Jory adds.
“That ecosystem helps us to be at the cutting edge of technology, to be able to try out new things and do new things. Things that are potentially bigger than Hastings, all on its own, could ever achieve. We're very well set up to actually take advantage of this new wave of AI and machine learning to really advance our services and products to our customers.”
Partnering for success
With more than 3.5 million customers across its home and vehicle insurance products, the company has evolved and grown since it was founded in 1997. While the majority of its current business is based around car insurance, Jory says the firm is also rapidly growing the other lines, too. And this growth must be underpinned and properly supported by the right IT strategy and execution.
The partnership with Snowflake goes back to around 2019 with what initially started as support for its YouDrive initiative.
“When I first joined the company, we were looking to launch our telematics product, which we call YouDrive, and we were working with a supplier called TMC. It was Snowflake, cloud-native for data. YouDrive is very data-rich as it manages your driving and checks how you drive etc. So [the solution] needed to have a lot of data compute behind it. That's how we started and we just rapidly saw how brilliant Snowflake was and we saw the opportunities to really get into bed with Snowflake,” Jory explains.
“Since then, we have run a transformation program to tackle our legacy systems and our legacy tooling. And we've gone 100% into Snowflake Data Cloud. We have absolutely no regrets. It's been a fantastic journey and it's opened up to us capabilities that we were never able to do before. We have massive compute power and we have access to machine learning capabilities that we never had before.”
One area of huge potential is reducing the cost of customer insurance premiums, according to Jory.
“I think the big thing for us is around how we use this data to really protect our customers, and to really drive value for them. The UK market has been very tough, for insurance. We've had the cost of living crisis, we've had a massive increase in insurance prices - a lot of that driven by the cost of claims, and repairs, and inflation in that - but it has been a sticker shock for our customers,” Jory says.
“One of the things that we're now really focused on - and I think we did a very good job in 2023 - is to use the power of our data, the knowledge, and the ability to interrogate that data to identify good customers. And what I mean by good customers is people with a low risk profile, good drivers who genuinely deserve to have a price that is reflective of their driving behavior.
“Over 2023, we were able to save in the region of £2.5 million for customers off their policy price. That's really important to us, because [the way insurance works is everybody pays a bit to look after people in their need. But the sad thing is that there are fraudsters and there are very high-risk people that cost extraordinary amounts with large losses. So, actually being able to use our data to identify which customers really don't present that sort of moral risk and offering them a better price and an opportunity to be rewarded for their good behavior is something we're very focused on. Every penny counts at the moment. Life is tough and if we can save our customers money, then that's something we will do.”
Removing complexity and cost
Being able to move cost reduction from theory to practice wouldn’t have been possible without the underlying technological changes Hastings Direct has made - in partnership with EY, Microsoft, and Snowflake - over the years.
Prior to the transformation efforts, the data tools people within the business could use spanned double digits. The data also resided in multiple places and the organization was spending quite a lot of money moving data around.
“We’ve really gone fast and furious in terms of consolidating and really aligning everything onto Snowflake Data Cloud. And we see that simplification coming through in the speed at which we are now able to do things, the speed at which people are able to access tooling, and the ability we now have to really understand our data,” Jory explains.
“10 years ago, pricing for a customer would maybe use 30 or 40 data points, we're now using in the 1,000s. And we will quote customers every second. For each of those quotes, we have to process 1,000s of data points, to get the right price and the right risk for that price, that we can give the customer the best option for them to see. And that has to happen across all of our brands. And across all of the price comparison websites that we're on.”
Quote-per-second efficiency has been improved by 30% as a result of the business and technology transformation, according to Jory.
What’s more, Jory adds that Hastings Direct has “seen an improvement in speed to market by more than 100%, the number of underwriting changes we are now able to make has more than trebled and the route to live is fully automated STP making releases intraday and simple to execute.”
Previously, some data analysts and scientists created local copies of data so they had it when they needed it. Now, however, as Jory explains, data really has been democratized within the organization.
“[Before], they made their own sort of data marts and we had multiple sorts of things. They used to grow like Gremlins breeding,” Jory says.
“Now we're able to say that the data is in one place, and it's secure, which is massively important for our customers and our colleagues. Access is controlled, you can get into it, you can do what you need to do with it. You can play, you can do whatever you want. That behavior has driven a lot of cost savings as well. They're starting to share much more about what they're doing with the data… We call it the pricing data and analytics community, where we actively work to share what we're doing with the data, who's doing what, who's owning it, what it looks like, and actually try to inspire us to do more interesting and exciting things with it as a community as opposed to as an individual.”
Looking ahead with ambition and positivity
Our interview was carried out at Snowflake Summit in San Francisco in June this year and Jory was definitely excited about why lies ahead given some of the news coming out of the event.
“I'm really hopeful with the announcements that we've had today with, you know, AI in the Data Cloud, the opportunities for things like Arctic and Streamlit and Cortex… Joining all of that information up, giving us that power to really be able to fight fraud, save money and offer really good value to our customers. I think that's the essence of everything that we do. And I think it's an important part that we as insurers play in the economy and in society,” Jory says.
Hastings Direct has been on quite the journey over the past four to five years, but it certainly isn’t resting on its laurels.
“I don't think there's a CIO alive today who would ever say that they've reached their destination. You only had to be in the keynote this morning to see how rapidly technology is changing, and how many things are being announced, and how fast everything's moving. But what I would say is Hastings is incredibly well set up now, with us being digital at the core, 100% in the cloud, using partners like Snowflake and Microsoft. What we can dream of, I honestly believe we can do.
“We have the tools, we have the partners, we have the compute and the capability. So it's a really, really exciting place to be as a CIO. I think that the key to winning in this environment is strategic partnership. It's being ruthless around making sure you're doing the right things, but most importantly, being brave.
Jory adds: “You need to be willing to try things and to adopt things, but also put up your hand and say ‘We don't know how to do this, we'd like to try this thing’ and then partnering and we can all innovate and say ‘Wow, look what we can do.’ It's a new age for technologists, an age of genuine agile innovation that is never going to stop, it's just gonna get faster and faster.”
It’s clear Jory and her team have had a very busy few years but that the enthusiasm for the art of the possible has not waned. She is excited not just about the wider potential of the strategic partnerships with Snowflake and Microsoft, but also about how Hastings Direct can continue to be a champion for the positive use of AI.
“For all this brilliant stuff, there is always the flip side. I’m part of a Technology Advisory Group, where we get together once a quarter to talk about what's going on and how we can work together to do innovative stuff and push the envelope,” Jory adds.
“One of the things I'm sort of challenging us with is, how we can use AI to find out who's using AI in a bad way. How do I use AI to find that fraud, that cybercrime to protect ourselves even more, so I can use it for good versus the people who might use AI in a bad way. Almost make it a superpower. Because that would just be so cool.”
While technological transformation is clearly delivering results for the business and customers, it’s important not to forget the internal people factor.
“There are no constraints to what the art of the opportunity is. That means that we're able to attract really strong talent to the organization. I think we are punching above our weight, now, in terms of who wants to come and work for us, because the message is getting out there that working in data in Hastings is a really cool place to be,” Jory says.
“I'm wonderfully busy. I love my job, I am very blessed. I've got some fantastic people around me, who also love their job. We have a brilliant culture at Hastings and we are doing exciting things. We've all learned together and it's been fantastic to see my colleagues growing and the ability for them to just suck up this knowledge and push themselves and the excitement when they achieve amazing things. Technology is a very exciting space to be. Where else would you want to be?”
