Davies Q&A – Mike Ketteringham, Chief Executive Officer, Ticker

Technology and data are changing the way motor insurance is designed, priced and delivered, but for Ticker, innovation has always been about solving real customer problems rather than technology for technology’s sake. We spoke to Mike Ketteringham, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ticker, about taking telematics beyond the traditional young-driver market, the advantages of the MGA model, the importance of underwriting discipline and strong governance, and how Ticker’s long-standing relationship with Davies has supported the business as it has grown.

1. Ticker has quickly established itself as a distinctive player in the UK motor market. Could you start by explaining the vision behind the business and how it has evolved as the company has grown?

We built Ticker to take the benefits of telematics to segments outside of the traditional young driver market, specifically where insurance has frequently been restricted or prohibitively expensive for customers.

The team brought together all the lessons learned from previous experience in the young driver market to create a set of products tailored to the specific needs of each new audience.

It’s a testament to the strength of that mission that we haven’t deviated one bit: we’re still building products that answer real-world problems for different customer groups.

2. You co-founded Ticker. What attracted you to the opportunity and how would you describe your role in shaping the underwriting strategy?

Ticker provided a blank-sheet opportunity to take our experience and build a business with a greater degree of ownership and utilise best-of-breed technology.

As an MGA, Ticker has control of the whole business model, so we’ve been able to rapidly develop the telematics capabilities while also building products and setting rates to capitalise on all of the benefits that telematics brings. At the same time, as we own all the data, we’ve been able to leverage the growing power of AI to learn from customer behaviour, which supercharges our day-to-day decision making.

3. Motor insurance is one of the most competitive and data-driven areas of the insurance market. How is Ticker approaching underwriting differently?

At Ticker, we match the telematics strategy and technology to the product and customer proposition – it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Ensuring a strong base of more traditional underwriting capabilities, such as anti-fraud and effective risk management, is as important as developing the best quality telematics data and insight that we can.

Too frequently, telematics has been seen as a silver bullet or ‘hallelujah’ moment within the insurance proposition. It’s much more complicated and nuanced than simply deciding to adopt a technology; telematics itself is not a product strategy any more than AI is a product strategy.

The key is where and when you deploy the telematics data to the greatest effect – and that depends on the specific nature of the customers and proposition.

It’s also critical that you back up the technology with a set of processes that embed learned data and insights across all aspects of the business.

4. The MGA and technology-led insurer model has become an increasingly important part of the market. From your perspective, what advantages does that model offer?

With so much control over our pricing, tech development and product strategy, Ticker has been able to pivot fast enough at critical times that we’ve thrived while many insurance startups failed.

Ticker can innovate and iterate much faster than traditional insurers. We’re not held back by large-scale legacy systems and our capacity providers have been incredibly supportive of our desire to implement new products on a test and learn basis.

Fundamentally, the MGA model allows us to deliver a deep specialist knowledge that larger insurers struggle to find the time or focus to achieve.

5. Scaling a technology-driven insurer requires the right operational foundations. What have been the key building blocks behind Ticker’s growth?

The key building blocks for Ticker were:

• Developing a technology infrastructure that is adaptable, flexible and scalable, and that we can manage with little input from third parties.
• Finding the right partners who share our vision and are willing to give us the space – without overbearing governance – safe in the knowledge that we have completely aligned interests in delivering excellent underwriting results.
• Running a very open business, so everyone has always been aware of goals and focused on the long-term strategy.
• Establishing the right governance. Quite often, smaller, younger companies run light on compliance, but we’ve tried to act like an established insurer since the very beginning. That makes scaling pain-free, and when big partners like Allianz and the RAC come on board, we’re ready for their level of detail. We’ve often been applauded for our governance and approach to compliance by our more established partners.

It would also be completely wrong of me not to mention the fact that we have the most wonderfully clever, talented and committed team, many of whom have been with us since the very beginning. Without them, none of what we have achieved would have been possible.

6. Davies supports Ticker through its insurance platform. How has that partnership enabled the business to focus on underwriting and product development?

Davies have been with us since the very start and have supported us with tailored, specialist advice across compliance and the regulatory environment.

They understand the challenges of younger, smaller organisations and are very aware that many aren’t able to have the dedicated resource that you would typically find in a larger, older organisation. Davies are therefore able to apply a more proportionate level of oversight, while highlighting key areas that may need development or focus.

We’ve always taken compliance seriously, a natural side-effect of having a very experienced team in place. Davies has been invaluable in ‘marking our homework’ to ensure that the internal view of compliance requirements is aligned to the wider regulatory environment.

7. The motor market has seen significant change in recent years, from regulatory reforms to claims inflation. How are those dynamics shaping underwriting strategy today?

I think looking at ‘recent years’ is far too big a timescale.

Key challenges at the moment are down to the here-and-now global political and macro-economic conditions. That’s why agility and control of pricing are so important to us.

The UK motor market is now starting to see some much-needed price corrections, to avoid slipping back into underwriting losses.

Claims inflation as a result of the conflict in the Gulf is front-of-mind and the longer the situation persists, the higher the likelihood and the greater the impact. We’re keeping a very close eye on both frequency and severity.

As an MGA, ensuring our capacity providers are comfortable is top of our priorities. As such, we have very deliberately maintained pricing discipline over the last 18 months. Our loss ratio performance is extremely good, so we are well positioned to capitalise on any rate hardening as it happens.

Finally, the rise of AI is both exciting and a challenge. Across underwriting, engineering and customer service, the benefits are huge, but you really have to understand the technology and have the right governance and monitoring in place as you build and educate the models. It’s something we’re taking very seriously and have already achieved some fantastic results.

8. Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of motor insurance and Ticker’s role within it?

Prompt: Reflect on technology, innovation, growth opportunities and the direction of the market.

Telematics is still largely confined to a few key market segments, but the potential of the technology and data to impact customer engagement and underwriting profitability is massive, particularly when you consider some of the broader challenges in the motor market and the rise of truly connected vehicles.

We have been quietly working on some game-changing upgrades to both our telematics and operational capabilities over the last 12 months, some of which are in everyday action, but more that will shortly be rolling out.

Finally, as I have already mentioned, while AI is not new to us, recent internal developments in that area are going to power many of the innovations we’ve been working on – particularly in the areas of pricing and operations. The scale and scope of what can be achieved in very short timescales is amazing and it gives us an opportunity to really accelerate our growth.