"As a mutual, a core part of our ethos is to strengthen financial resilience, and we believe in adapting underwriting models in line with societal change and shifting market conditions is vital."
- Daniel Simpson, chief innovation officer at Shepherds Friendly
Shepherds Friendly has partnered with insurance & healthcare specialist Alula Technologies to access its low-code underwriting platform, which has been designed to adapt at pace to changing market conditions and consumer needs.
This partnership will allow Shepherds Friendly to reach a wider audience, offering more flexibility with who can be underwritten for protection policies.
“As a mutual, a core part of our ethos is to strengthen financial resilience, and we believe in adapting underwriting models in line with societal change and shifting market conditions is vital.
“Our research shows that only 14% of adults in the UK have Income Protection (IP) in place – this is something we are committed to improving,” explained Daniel Simpson, chief innovation officer at Shepherds Friendly (pictured).
Moving forward, Shepherds Friendly intends to integrate various pre-configured capabilities that exist within the platform, such as AI decisioning and document fraud analysis.
The mutual also hopes to leverage the platform’s ability to ingest external data sources for underwriting, which could boost real-time decisions and insights to improve the customer experience.
“This new platform significantly enhances our ability to adapt our processes at speed. By automating our underwriting, we can deliver faster, more consistent decisions and improve the overall digital experience for our customers.
“In the future, it will also allow us to ingest external data sources into our underwriting processes, helping us to future-proof our operations and continue innovating,” he said.
Patrick Ashton, solutions director at Alula Technologies, added: “The first phase of our work with Shepherds Friendly was aimed at meeting its current needs, but also at enabling it to adapt to the changing consumer landscape in future.
“We look forward to continuing to work together as the business grows further and hope our platform plays a role in ensuring the society’s long-term success.”
