The Insurance sector in the UK is built on rich traditions and face-to-face operations. 

Pre pandemic, 7,000+ industry specialists walked in and out of Lloyd’s of London marketplace each day to exchange risk propositions, discuss policies and close deals on the 300-year old trading floor. 

The coronavirus lockdown closed the doors to Lloyd’s underwriting floor and forced these deals into living rooms and home offices, driven by the latest cloud technology. For a sector notoriously resistant to replacing valuable in-person operations with digital processes, insurers pushed their own limits and embraced new ways to transact, meet and close deals. In fact, our clients across the Financial Services sphere responded to the crisis with real creativity and imagination to keep the cogs turning with long-term positive impact on their businesses 

One such example is how Microsoft’s Power Platform technology allowed Telefónica Tech’s client Beazley to work with us to bring a solution – Beazley Booking – to market in days and weeks, instead of the months and years strategic projects can often take. 

Using Microsoft Power Platform to build an Insurance booking app: solution overview

There are three key processes and scenarios where Insurance bookings apps will be most impactful: 

1. Using Power Apps for Underwriter Availability Management

Underwriters assign their availability in the Power Apps Model Driven App which is then visible to the brokers to review.

This app is built on a Power Apps model driven app for internal users, including Underwriters and Underwriting Assistants. This model driven app allows underwriters to set their own availability. 

1. A record is created for the underwriter in the internal Model Driven App. 
2. Custom fields are created by the developer to enable the booking process, including insurance type drop down, contact details, time zones and WebEx or Teams meeting ID 
3. Underwriters and assistants can manage their time, set timeslots, length of meeting and availability throughout the working week and set exceptions for unavailability for example, other meeting types, personal appointments, focus time and annual leave.
4. Power Automate takes all this information and creates a range of timeslots for Brokers to view and choose, displaying date, time, length of appointment and time zone which is important when working across multiple geographies.
5. Built on the Common Data Service (CDS), information and data is now available within the portal and available to Broker and other external users.

2. Leveraging a Broker Portal for Booking a Timeslot

Brokers log on as external users to the Broker Power Apps Portal, see which underwriters they want to meet, view time slots available and can create an agenda, attach documents and submit the booking. 

Within the outward facing Broker Portal, built on a Canvas App, external users can view their forthcoming bookings with Underwriters, book new appointments and add documents to upcoming bookings.  

1. Key meeting information is displayed via subject, time slot, booked by, underwriter, insurance type and link to video-conferencing fields.
2. Each appointment is saved in each user’s calendar, sent by Power Automate.
3. Within this view, external users can also book a new timeslot via the book timeslot button in a simple three step process.
4. Step 1 – select insurance type to filter available underwriters from that business area. Select underwriter from the drop-down menu, before adding subject. 
5. Step 2 – the system surfaces the available time slots for the user to choose from. When a time slot is selected, users can add agendas and upload documents like insurance slips to allow the underwriter to gain context to the meeting and prepare accordingly 
6. Step 3 – here you can review all information submitted and make any amendments before submitting the booking request. 
7. Upon booking the timeslot, two actions take place: the timeslot is created in the Underwriter’s Model Driven app and Power Automate will send a calendar invite to both parties with the high-level information, videoconferencing link agenda and any attachments. 
8. My time slot Portal front page will now show the new appointment in the view. 
9. Back in the Underwriter’s Model Driven app, the management information will show the new booking and the meeting is saved in their Outlook calendar, with no need to respond to the sender. 

3. Implementing Power Apps for Booking MI

Underwriters’ and brokers’ time is automatically booked out in their Outlook diary for the meetings which can be set up on Microsoft Teams and WebEx. Booking MI is available to view in the Power App.

Booking MI is the Underwriter’s go-to view to prepare for the week ahead and manage their workloads and opportunities. To do this, the underwriter would:  

1. Go into management info (information?) tab within the Underwriter’s Model Driven App. 
2. Look at the three charts which provide high level information to the underwriter on their week ahead by broker, by attempted timeslot bookings and active timeslots, thus allowing them to plan their week. 
3. Allow Underwriters to understand which brokers are booking and how often, to gain visibility on the brokers attempting to book and to measure where their time is being spent for maximum efficiencies. 
4. MI is fully extensible to additional integrations to fit wider business needs or to evolve with future iterations or augmentations. 

Microsoft Power Platform: no limits extensibility

Beazley’s CTO Mark Moerdyk says: “Beazley Booking uses the Microsoft Power Platform to improve the quality of interactions with brokers and ensure that our underwriters have access to data that can help improve service in the future. This is not only a system that improves our service during this period of social distancing but also has the capability to provide long-term support as the market adapts to a more efficient and flexible model.” 

Less code, more power: 86% of Fortune 500 companies use Power Apps

With 86% of Fortune 500 companies using Power Apps, there has never been a better time to modernise your data and harness the power of the Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365. No-code, low code capability is here now and can augment your legacy systems to fit the new normal in days and weeks.  Get in touch with us now to learn how we can help your business to create Power Apps that help Underwriter and Brokers.