When Southern Cross Travel Insurance (SCTI) decided to enter the fiercely competitive Australian travel insurance market, they knew they needed to throw away the rulebook.
The key was managing fixed costs. “We didn’t want to ship any paper, anywhere”, said SCTI CEO, Craig Morrison. “My assessors are highly trained... and paid accordingly. They need to spend their time assessing.”
Enter Datam, who took on the task of transforming SCTI’s claim back office from the bottom up. “Craig came to us with a very blank piece of paper”, recalls Nick Fox, Datam’s head of Sales and Marketing.
Fox says the Datam solution has enabled SCTI to move into the Australian market with a very low fixed cost base. “SCTI have saved about 65% of their assessing costs – that’s a major chunk.”
Such is the success of the new processing system that SCTI have brought forward the roll-out of the system for the New Zealand market. “It’s gone brilliantly. It’s gone very, very well and it’s happened in a very short timeframe”, Morrison says. “What we originally built for Australia has now got much, much bigger. The efficiencies and cost savings are phenomenal.”
SCTI was awarded a 5 star ‘outstanding value’ award by the CANSTAR CANNEX insurance product rating body.
Fox singles out Datam’s scale, on both sides of the Tasman, and their experience transforming major corporate and government clients – including BNZ, Telecom and Inland Revenue – as a significant factor for SCTI. “We can do it much, much faster. We know this stuff well – we do it every day.”
