While the current economic climate drives up motor insurance demand, the deal aims to ensure ‘more comprehensive and cost effective policies for young drivers insuring their own car’, says chief executive 

Peterborough-based Marmalade provides car insurance to young drivers, offering customers a range of policy options - including learner driver insurance to pay-as-you-go cover.

“At a time when learner drivers are having to spend an increasing amount of money on tuition as the driving test backlog continues to clear, it is essential we are able to provide our customers with the most competitive insurance premiums possible.”  Crispin Moger Marmalade CE

Insurtech and incumbent insurers are rarely out of the headlines so it is interesting to view the digital maturity of Marmalade compared with its competitors.

Marmalade scores 43% in the Altus DigitalBar

 This compares with market leader By Miles scoring 62%

Both are weaker when it comes to digital claims which is reflected in all the short-term car insurance providers. In fact, outside Quote and Buy the scoring is poor. 

This compares with much higher digital maturity achieved by incumbent carriers.

Top of the ratings is AXA with 62% equalling By Miles

RIAS fares less better with a score of

Comparing this data suggests that Ageas and Marmalade combine well in product, Quote and Buy and MTAs. When it comes to claims, however, there may be some way to go for young drivers wishing to register and manage claims from their phones. 

This raises another issue- the customer experience can vary from product tp product and across different parts of the customer insurance journey. Shouldn't customers be able to expect a similar good experience across all products- all lines of business. 

Some carriers already achieve this- it was not overnight and demands vision and commitment as Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm)  advocates.

To begin that journey, you need to build clear representations of your current state and your desired future state. Capturing your current state involves an act of description. Capturing your desired future state requires an act of design. If you do not have a clear design for your future state, you have no north star by which to navigate your digital transformation, and it cannot possibly succeed.

So, let us assume we have a clear design for our desired future state. It won’t take you long to realize there is little chance that a single intervention can get you from here to there. So, the next major deliverable must be a roadmap organized around a maturity model, or what we like to call, a stairway to heaven. Each step up the stairway should be designed to deliver value upon completion, thereby allowing the organization to pace its change management, funding things as it goes, building its confidence, and reassuring its various stakeholders.

With such a roadmap in place, now you have a current-state/future-state accountability mechanism that can govern each stage of the transformation—the software and systems, the systems integrators, the process owners insider your enterprise, and the people responsible for executing the processes. As we have noted elsewhere, digital transformation is not a restaurant. You cannot simply pay for it and have it delivered to your table. It is a gymnasium. You still have to pay for it, but to get any value out, you have to actually do the transformational work yourself. Transformational software, in other words, is like a Peloton—it’s cool, but only if you engage.

All the data is from the Altus DigitalBar which is updated constantly and is a great market intelligence source for product planners, digital transformation teams and those planning innovation.

(Disclosure- I am an associate of Altus). 

Find out how to leverage the data for many lines of business and obtain a free trial by emailing mike.daly@altus.co.uk

There will be a new Digital Bar launched for embedded motor insurance soon so watch out for news.