In profile - Claire Hird, The Exeter

When this arm of L&G was acquired by LV=, she did extensive work migrating customers and employees across to the new business.

On 2nd January 2023, Hird made her next big career move, to The Exeter. After six months in the business, The Intermediary caught up with Hird in order to discuss her experiences so far, what makes The Exeter stand out, and her plans for the future.

An exciting trajectory
The role with The Exeter represents a fresh challenge, in which Hird has fast learned the ins and outs of protection, health insurance (PMI), and life assurance.

“There’s been a bit of a learning curve for me on the product side,” she explains. “I crossed paths with the protection team at L&G so I had knowledge of that to start with, but then it’s just about using the experts around you in order to understand what’s what with the products.”

There are various parts of the role where the skills came naturally, due to Hird’s previous experience.

She says: “Customer service is customer service. It doesn’t matter what product you’re selling, it’s about understanding what your customers need, what your advisers need in terms of their day-to-day service requirements.”

As for the choice to move to The Exeter, Hird explains: “It was highly recommended, that was the first thing. It also offered a completely different environment. L&G is a huge company, this is much smaller – there’s about 200 people in The Exeter overall, and about 90 of those are in the customer service function. That’s what appeals – that differential of working for a small mutual organisation, where you can affect change much more quickly and easily.

“The trajectory of The Exeter was also really interesting to me. We’ve undergone a serious amount of growth over the past few years, and there’s a lot of ambition to grow in the organisation. The CEO, Isobel Langton, has huge drive and motivation for growing the business and really improving all the customer service focus we have at the moment. There’s a real drive to do more and better things for our customer base and our advisers – that was another big appeal for me.”

In the role itself, Hird has continued this work to constantly analyse and improve the firm’s customer processes and adviser journeys. This means focusing on improving the planning and forecasting of workloads, and working closely with the sales function to understand their path and connect this with the work being done in customer service.

This year, of course, has been an interesting time to take on a new role, particularly one so steeped in service. With economic challenges coming thick and fast, Hird says recruitment has been a particular challenge across the board in this market.

“A lot of our emphasis is on retention, looking at career paths and making sure people want to stay,” she says. “We’re doing well in that at the moment. The Exeter also has really good processes in place when it comes to hybrid working, which has also improved our capability to recruit, with employees based all over the country.”

For the most part, the challenges seen in her first half year in the role have largely centred around keeping on top of demand.

Health insurance explosion
This rising demand has been particularly pronounced in the private health insurance space, despite headlines warning about customers faltering in their desire for protection products at a time when they are looking to reduce costs.

“If you go back to the start of the year, the NHS was headline news, whether it was waiting times, or strikes,” Hird says. “We’re starting to see a younger demographic purchasing health insurance, so we need to understand how that new customer base behaves.

“People have really stopped to think about what protection they need for themselves and their families, and that’s not really slowing down, even though it’s not forefront in the headlines any more.”

Other factors driving this growth include the ageing population, and the legacy of Covid-19, which made people more aware of worst-case scenarios, and the need to protect the things they hold valuable. This conversation, she adds, is particularly important when customers are taking out a mortgage or remortgaging.

Hird says: “The growth of health insurance has been huge this year, so we’ve had to gear up for that and ensure our service levels can support the level of growth we’ve seen.”

From broker feedback, Hird says, the firm has dealt with this explosion in health insurance business well from a service perspective.

“Our claims teams have really stepped up,” she adds. “We’ve been given feedback that our service stands out. We are very accessible, so our telephone service levels are always green, and we’ve done a lot of planning work so that those service levels remain good in the face of the extra volume. Now it’s about maintaining that and getting even better.”

The Exeter has also dealt with this increase in demand by relying on and growing its strong relationships with brokers, as well as its reputation for expertise in this field.

While some have warned that inflationary pressures could cool customer interest in protection, and particularly health insurance, The Exeter has not seen an impact on its volumes. In fact, Hird notes that the cost-of-living crisis is causing people to think carefully, and choose more wisely, what they spend their money on – and protection is still high on the list.

Fuelling the conversation
When it comes to making these important choices and ensuring that customers are thinking carefully about how they use their money, Hird feels that the Consumer Duty regulations will be a great help.

“Advisers need to demonstrate to customers the raft of products that are available to them in a clear way,” she says.

A particular concern that pervades conversations with protection professionals is about the secondary nature of this product in many brokers’ eyes, where it should in fact be part of any mortgage or remortgage conversation.

“Consumer Duty will definitely help that, which is without a doubt a good thing for customers and for firms and advisers,” says Hird. “The quality and clarity of conversations will be much more at the forefront of advisers’ minds when going into discussions with customers.”

These conversations will also be driven by greater consumer understanding. Hird cites TV advertising campaigns that highlight the need to have protection in place, which will hopefully mean customers are more open to these conversations.

“The Exeter sees Consumer Duty as a massive advantage that will help drive quality conversations, as well as quality products and services,” Hird adds.

For the firm itself, while it undertook the necessary prep work ahead of the 31st July implementation deadline, there was little that needed to change, according to Hird.

“We’ve had to review everything, but that was already part of what we were doing as part of our journey mapping work,” she explains. “Whilst that has been an undertaking, we found there weren’t many changes we needed to make, our journeys and documentation were already fairly clear.

“We’ve always worked under the ‘treating customers fairly’ [TCF] principles, which are in line with a lot of the Consumer Duty regulation.”

Finding balance with tech
In order to continually improve customer service and processes, it would be remiss to address the topic of technology. Service users across all industries and sectors increasingly expect firms to be highly tech-enabled – often known as the ‘Amazon effect’ – and to be able to access information and products at the tap of a button.

However, the protection market poses significant challenges. Not only is this a market that – rightly or wrongly – relies on legacy systems and is wary of hopping on the next tech bandwagon, but the very nature and complexity of these products and the context of a client’s financial situation, means there is a perennial need for the human touch.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do on the digital side of things – that’s a work in progress at the moment, but customers always want to talk to someone,” says Hird.

“The next six months and into next year are very much about looking at how we bring about these digital services, in a market which is not massively ahead in terms of digital services for customers.

“That’s very much what we’re working on now: how we can embrace the digital aspects of service, while also making sure that our people are valued and interacting with customers when they need to.”

Hird notes that firms can often go too far in either the tech or human-led direction. For The Exeter, it is all about finding a balance between the two.

Future evolutions
Whether examining its processes under the remit of Consumer Duty, meeting rising demand in turbulent market conditions, or moving forward with the right balance of tech, what underpins The Exeter’s approach is a constant drive to challenge and improve on its customer service.

“What stands out about The Exeter for me is that there is a desire to always improve and invest in our services, which will continue,” says Hird. “Everything that we do, we challenge and question it – is it right for the adviser and the customer? Can we improve it? Is this adding value? That has driven a lot of improvements already.”

Part of this is about not losing focus on the people on the front-line, whose experiences are integral to understanding the market, the customer, and how the business could evolve in the future. This is also where The Exeter’s willingness to try new things and make changes comes to the fore.

“A big driver throughout the rest of this year and beyond is using people’s expertise to improve what we do every day,” Hird concludes.

This article was originally published by The Intermediary in August 2023, and can be found on page 94-95.