With a background in general insurance, Darren Spriggs brings a fresh perspective to the protection arena. Paul Robertson interviews the new MD of Ageas Protect.
Darren Spriggs could easily be seen as a breath of fresh air wafting through the stuffy corridors of the protection sector. The newly minted managing director of Ageas Protect is the only head of a protection insurer COVER can think of who is not actually an old protection hand.
Originally a general insurance specialist, he only joined the protection sector in February last year, becoming operations director at Ageas Protect in a move from its sister company RIAS, the over-50s general insurer.
Although his predecessor was Martin Werth, an actuary and arguably one of the most technical bosses in the sector, he is relatively sanguine about his protection experience, noting, with some justification, that it is not a problem.
"I am not a technical person," he said. "I am not an actuary, I am not an accountant - anything like that. Ageas is going through its infancy and growing. My background and hopefully my skill set, is about translating businesses into a business growth phase. The fundamental purpose of business is to make money. That is my background."
KEEPING THINGS EFFICIENT
Spriggs has already started bringing in the more efficient practices of the GI insurers, stating on taking up his present post that where there would be "clear blue water" between Ageas and rivals was on underwriting.
What he meant was not so much the criteria of underwriting, but its core elements: service, technology and processes. He explained: "A small example from a service perspective - our principal and non-negotiable starting point - is that we operate on the basis of no backlogs.
"If you fall behind on your backlogs, you spend 10% to 20% - even 30% on occasion - of your resources trying to deal with phone calls asking ‘Where is my case?' etc.
"If we do it once, do it right and do it quickly, you actually move a lot quicker, rather than trying to appease people and their frustrations. "From my background, service is a given. Coming into this industry, I would say that one of the surprises I've had is that service generally across the industry is at best possibly described as average and acceptable."
Ageas is also investing in a web-based capability, to allow advisers to do some of the legwork themselves. "That way everybody wins because from an adviser and an intermediary perspective, they can do it when they want to, online," he said.
"For me, it's a differentiator and that's why we invest in it and will continue to do so."
