Craig Astbury, IT Director
“We’ve been able to innovate in a number of areas and without SSP’s tools we wouldn’t have been able to succeed against some of the bigger brands in the market.”
Jigsaw was originally founded in 2000 and is proud to now be entering our 20th year in business. As of December 2020, the company had more than 200,000 customers and 144 colleagues. Our core-values include Customers at our core, honesty first, keep it simple, here to stay and there for you. These core values underpin our Mission – “We are committed to delivering excellent service and to being there when you need us most. We do this by continually investing in our colleagues, technology and products.” It is important to us that any providers we operate alongside or partner with only strengthen these values.
We started working with SSP around 15 years ago, this came about because we built up a book of mostly motorcycle breakdown policies and wanted to start cross-selling motorcycle insurance. Our Commercial Director, Richard Sharman, had used SSP prior to working with Jigsaw and naturally it was the first software house of choice, having provided good customer service and enabling software familiarity. My personal experience goes back with SSP around 20 years, so many of the SSP team I work with today I have been working with for a long time, with strong relationships being formed over the years. Our current Account Manager has been brilliant from day one, turning any issues faced into positive outcomes.
I have used other platforms over the years and after discussing with other brokers the strengths and weaknesses of others available, it is evident that the agile approach SSP has adopted allows for a more streamlined process. Jigsaw has also adopted an agile methodology in recent years, and it is great to see that SSP is evolving and becoming more aligned to our own approach.
Seeing the news that SSP had gone into a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) was a real positive for Jigsaw; we have also been making the move over to AWS internally over the last 5 years to align with our Cloud strategy. The uptime is very strong since these migrations have taken place, and the reliability of the software is also of great value to us. The key benefit of AWS hosted data for Jigsaw though is the transparency of the infrastructure, we are already aware of the AWS products, what the performance is like and what we can expect. The scalability is also very beneficial, we are able to scale up and down whenever we need to, with the right resource, and knowing that SSP now has that ability too through AWS is very reassuring.
We are in the early stages of implementing the SSP Intuition (Data Lake) solution and are really excited at the possibilities that this solution will provide; with access to large volumes (billions of lines) of real-time data, this will enable us to look at key performance indicators, assisting with decision making and planning, and improved profitability for our partners. It really is a major step forward for our MI capabilities.
We are now in the process of moving our internal infrastructure into AWS environment and SSP are also working on this project with us, again allowing the businesses to be aligned to best drive innovation.
Jigsaw have more than 200,000 live policies and using the SSP software we haven’t had any performance issues, it scales very well. We are aware that there are other brokers with more policies than this, and it is reassuring to know that the system will cope with this demand as our business grows. Over the last few years, we have had 2 main strategic objectives: to develop self-service for all customers and to develop true real-time pricing for all our products. We have been involved in many projects with SSP based around these objectives over the years and we have had great support. From a self-service perspective, we are now integrated with SSP for Standard Motor Risks and Breakdown which means we can onboard new policies through a completely frictionless process, without human intervention. Many checks such as driving license checks which would have previously required human involvement is now automatic, improving both our journey and our customers’ journey too. There are several API’s in place and hooked up with SSP which allows us to deliver our real-time pricing objective; we have been able to innovate in several areas and without SSP’s tools we wouldn’t have been able to succeed against some of the bigger brands in the market.
The overall Account Management at SSP is excellent and having direct access to engineers and the support team is always appreciated, the team are always supportive of what we are trying to do. Whenever we have come forward with innovative ideas, the challenges are discussed but in a positive way without any barriers being presented. Other software vendors we have worked with have struggled to provide the same level of service. The teams also know their audience, they will shape their approach to best suit which teams they are taking too, whether that be the IT team or someone who is not from a technical background, that will be considered. If individuals are left baffled by insurance terminology that they are not familiar with then you can lose trust and confidence. SSP is brilliant at overcoming this.
Craig Astbury
IT Director | Jigsaw Insurance
Though Jigsaw are a traditional insurance broker by name, when you investigate the business a little closer, we provide something different. We offer Breakdown, Pet and Motor insurance but in each of these areas we are involved in delivering on all aspects of the insurance product lifecycle – from product and system design, through to fully administering and settling insurance claims.
https://www.ssp-worldwide.com/wp-content/uploads/rac-tile-logo-2-1.png 324 600 Damien Bidmead https://www.ssp-worldwide.com/wp-content/uploads/ssp-group-logo-300x162.png Damien Bidmead2021-03-12 15:00:002021-07-06 11:22:58Anthony Robertshaw, The RAC
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Anthony Robertshaw, The RAC