True collaboration is a recipe for success

It goes without saying that the most successful businesses are those that know exactly what their customers are looking for – but achieving this level of insight can be complex and challenging for many organisations. In absence of the hitherto elusive crystal ball, a new era of collaboration holds the promise of an expedient route to a brighter future in the legal expenses market.

Many in the legal expenses sector may argue that collaboration has existed for many years, with distributors and providers working together to develop ‘tailored’ solutions. This may well be the case, but how does this version of collaboration hold up under closer scrutiny when we consider the state of the UK legal expenses sector today?

Legal expenses cover remains a poorly understood product, excessively low utilisation rates should be a source of genuine concern – not general complacency, cover has not kept pace with changing customer needs and we can’t walk past the fact that there has been an almost total disregard of growth opportunities in the past 20 years.

These are not the signals of a vibrant and healthy sector, so it seems something needs to change – which is why we created Coral Insurance.

I believe that at the very heart of the problem lies a deep-rooted perception bias which continues to reinforce a set of outdated assumptions about the needs of the customer, whilst conveniently allowing the sector to swerve its biggest challenge of all – that of diminishing relevancy.

So, as a recipe for future success, perhaps it’s time for the legal expenses sector to update its view of collaboration – with the important introduction of one additional but critical ingredient – the customer.

At Coral, we are pioneering the use of rich customer and claims insight to support and identify opportunities for new, value-adding customer propositions – true collaboration integrating customers, partners and stakeholders in a mutual value co-creation process.

In doing so, we want to enable the sector to begin to reclaim some of its lost ground, where the products and services we offer are highly valued and actively used by the customer, in the way they are within the markets of many of our counterparts in Europe and beyond.