Our Story & Key Milestones

1990 ~ 2000

The Early Years

Solutions to a problem.

In the early 90’s the insurance market was struggling to build and distribute digital insurance products because there was no consistent way of doing so.

In 1994 Polaris was founded by Commercial Union, Eagle Star, General Accident, Guardian Royal Exchange, Norwich Union, Royal Insurance and Sun Alliance to provide the technology and solutions to create a standard way of building and distributing general insurance products.

Highlights

  • ProductWriter rating engine launched and adopted by 40 organisations
  • Polaris enabled technology to allow insurance policies to be sold via digital television using ProductWriter’s Run Time Environment software.
  • The Commercial Lines Market Initiative (CLMI Limited), which previously controlled
    commercial lines standards, merged with Polaris. These became part of the Polaris
    Standards.
  • The Association of British Insurers (ABI) transferred their e-trading support services to Polaris, bringing all UK general insurance standards together under one roof – Polaris and the Polaris Standards were formed in 1999.

2000 ~ 2010

Emergence of Digital Trading

What life was like
During this decade, a majority of insurance was still done offline which involved a lengthy postal chain between the customer, broker and insurer in order to take out a policy.

Highlights

  • Commercial Lines trading gateway imarket launched; seven insurers and two broker systems integrated
  • Digital trading Standards developed for D&O, Engineering and PA, CCI (large) & Motor Fleet products
  • ProductWriter used by 70 organisations.

2011 ~ 2020

Growth of Digital Trading

What life was like
Larger brokers adopted digital trading for commercial as part of their business model, reaping significant operational benefits into their businesses.

Highlights

  • ProductWriter Cloud launched providing seamless installations with automated
    upgrades
  • imarket grows to 400,000 policies traded annually
  • Live-Chat implemented on imarket providing a chat service between brokers and insurers. This solution increased efficiency, question response accuracy and contract certainty by routing chats to relevant insurer teams.
  • Polaris’ Standards management platform comprehensively updated providing API
    functionality for automated downloads of Standards updates and releases
  • Standards users exceeded 100 organisations for the first time

2021 & Beyond

Core & Widely used Digital Trading Technology

Polaris digital community underpins everything that we do.

We gain a lot of feedback from our users, key organisations and members of the
industry (such as BIBA, MIB and Thatcham). This totals to over 1,000 hours of insight
each year.

This insight combined with a large proportion of our financial surplus and emerging
technology are used to further develop our products to enhance and improve digital
trading.

Highlights

  • Polaris announced record usage of all its products; 125 organisations using
    Standards, 80 using ProductWriter
  • ProductWriter Machine Learning support capabilities developed in collaboration
    with select clients
  • ProductWriter Accelerated Distribution capability launched; external tables, rating of complex risks and several other enhancements launched
  • imarket comprehensively upgraded via a £1.8 million investment; multiple insurer and broker systems collaborate with Polaris to achieve this
  • imarket crossed 500,000 annually traded policies, £400 million GWP
  • Live-Chat averaged 30,000 chats a month, rapidly becoming a key communication method between insurers and brokers (70% Brokers say this is their preferred communication method)
  • Industry-wide Standards upgrade programme launched

Polaris logo evolution

2004
2009
2017
2019

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