Having grown our presence in the insurance market since 1999, through acquisitions and organic growth, we are now acknowledged as the leading provider of outsourced services in the UK. In the general insurance market we provide outsourced back office processing through to frontline customer services across commercial, reinsurance and personal lines insurance. The scale of our support ranges from complete end to end solutions for large insurers and brokers to bespoke services focused on specific needs.

Many major insurers have been slow to embrace the cost and flexibility benefits that outsourcing can offer. Today’s competitive and regulatory pressures are expected to change this, and Capita is well placed to benefit.

Size of opportunity
The UK insurance industry is the largest in Europe and the third largest globally, accounting for some 11% of worldwide premium income. Over 75% of UK households buy motor and home insurance, and there has been a steady increase in claim payouts over the past decade.

This presents significant opportunities for Capita to provide administrative services, deliver cost savings and improve customer services to help insurers respond to demand. We have renewed our focus on this sector and are confident of further growth.

Drivers for outsourcing include: 

• Need to provide claims processing and comprehensive, quality customer service at lower operational cost
• Importance of bringing new products to market faster
• Regulatory demands, such as the strengthened EU-wide requirements on capital adequacy and risk management by 2012, prompting insurers to address cost bases and back office efficiency
• A marked consumer shift towards ‘virtual’ insurance companies driven by affinity groups targeting specific customer segments. These ‘virtual’ organisations are often supported by outsourced back office infrastructure as well as online sales
• Need to improve management of claims costs, particularly by preventing fraud and leakage.