The story of the NBS and SchemeServe partnership began in 2012. Seeking to profoundly transform its business, NBS knew they had to overhaul high-touch manual processes run on legacy systems.
As a forward-thinking underwriter NBS wanted to adopt a technology-driven approach to drive efficiency, customer-centricity, and a quality-of-service ethos that could challenge the status quo. NBS selected SchemeServe because they wanted control over their own destiny.
SchemeServe was the only solution that would enable NBS to tailor schemes, style their front-end and streamline operations to suit the unique needs of their business and their brokers.
In just 15 days SchemeServe delivered a fully customisable, scalable, and self-managed distribution platform, and a foundation for true digital transformation.
“SchemeServe gave us complete control over our destiny” said Steve Cowman, Managing Director of NBS. “We were able to customise and maintain the solution from day one. We can build new schemes in a fraction of the time and change documents, rates, rules, and terms almost instantly, something that proved to be essential as we embarked on a journey of rapid growth”.
But it’s in the last 3 years that the agility of SchemeServe’s self-managed solution has really come into its own…
In the wake of the Covid pandemic NBS needed to accelerate growth, and double down on its ability to differentiate, by assisting its brokers’ ability to survive and thrive in a highly challenging insurance landscape and continued economic uncertainty.
Once again, the unique power of SchemeServe’s fully customisable, future-proof, and self-managed distribution platform would deliver the agility and flexibility NBS needed to steal a march on the market.
SchemeServe enabled NBS to quickly build and tailor products to emerging customer needs – such as trading issues, rising costs and empty premises – reacting fast to new opportunities that would deliver innovative solutions to brokers, expand its product range, increase renewals, and attract capacity in unprecedented hard market conditions.
With SchemeServe already proven to deliver the ultimate in control, NBS were poised to take agile underwriting to the next level. NBS extended its market share by delivering highly responsive products fast to market – for example, they launched a new unoccupied property quote and buy product in just 14 days – and by integrating advanced third-party data enrichment automatically within the quote journey they could quickly build a comprehensive picture of risk for faster and better underwriting decision making, which attracted more insurers and brokers to the business. In 2022 NBS won Gold for this initiative at the Insurance Times Awards.
“SchemeServe is an example of how agile self-manged technology guarantees adaptability and survival in forced challenging market conditions. We weren’t just able to respond to the impact of the Covid pandemic, but we were able to respond incredibly quickly, launching new products in days that would make a real difference to our brokers and their customers, and we are still reaping the rewards today as the world looks ahead to a tough and prolonged economic recession.”
“Thanks to SchemeServe’s constant desire to keep on evolving its tech, and the complete control it gives us over every aspect of our business from cradle-to-grave, we know we can continue to move in the direction we want to go in no matter what obstacles are thrown in our path”, said Steve.
NBS has grown from £19m gross written premium (GWP) at the start of the pandemic, increasing GWP to £51m in 2021 and £75m in 2022, with the expectation of turning over in excess of £100m in 2023. New carriers continue to be attracted to this innovative underwriting business, and more brokers are benefitting from the ease of transaction, responsive products, and differentiated service proposition NBS delivers.
