By implementing the Root portfolio of SaaS solutions with built in APIs, TFG Insurance has gained capability to build custom products that meet requirements according to individual risk, price, life stage while providing employees a single dashboard to manage operations.
TFG Insurance, an account holder with The Foschini Group, has been offering its customers insurance since 1994. It is underwritten by GuardRisk, which is an entrenched part of Root’s partner network.
Through its national footprint of more than 3,500 stores and 34 brands, including Jet, Markham, @home, Sportscene and Sterns, the Group offers life and non-life cover in various combinations – for portables like mobile phones and jewellery, health, accident and death cover, and for unforeseen lifestyle expenses such as legal costs and loss of income.
“Our focus has always been on creating a product set that is easy to understand, meets our customers’ needs, and is underpinned by simplified underwriting,” says Gareth Jones, Head of TFG Insurance. “We make essential products more affordable for the low to middle-income mass market.”
Pain points and implementation
Before its upgrade and modernisation, TFG’s back-office processes required staff to work across multiple platforms with disparate spreadsheets and reports. TFG has been investigating re-platforming and innovation for its insurance platforms as its customers’ needs evolved. TFG published an RFP to identify a partner, and Root proved to be the best fit for the business.
“We use APIs to help businesses like TFG to launch insurance products faster than the traditional way,” says Charlotte Koep, Chief Operating Officer at Root.
During this project, TFG’s insurance and product teams have worked closely with Root’s Professional Services team to establish and refine a hybrid Waterfall-Agile approach to implement a suite of insurance products. The approach seamlessly combines the benefits of the Waterfall and Agile methodologies to rapidly launch insurance products in the market.
The Waterfall component provides the foundation of a structured and predictable milestone-driven approach while injecting the adaptability and responsiveness of the Agile component. This combination enables clear planning, efficient resource allocation, adaptation to evolving requirements, and improved cross-team collaboration, ultimately leading to faster product development.
The breadth of contact between Root and TFG is key to the efficiency with which products are implemented. The process initiates with TFG’s business analysis team, with input from their Insure claims team, ideating solutions put forward by TFG product managers.
Further along in the process, TFG’s testing team engages in the quality assurance of products before the data analytics team ensures all information and reporting-related matters conform to regulatory requirements.
Benefits and RoI
Root achieves a seamless integration with both TFG and GuardRisk’s data infrastructures, guaranteeing the fulfilment of operational, regulatory, and compliance reporting needs, while also providing users on-demand access to data on the Root platform as needed.
The infrastructure has been designed with TFG’s existing customers in mind. With a single view of customers, TFG can now drive greater revenue and operational efficiency through its existing financial services products and easily build, sell and service new products without technical barriers.
The platform enables direct communication with customers in real-time so that they are kept informed at every step of the way, whether they are signing up, making a claim or requesting assistance.
“People have different requirements according to age and life stage, and they are demanding targeted solutions based on need and affordability,” says Jones. “With Root on board, we can build a comprehensive product offering for consumers who historically have not had access to these types of products and who are not comfortable dealing with big insurance companies that cater to the high-end market.”
For TFG employees, the entire customer journey can be managed through one interface, from quote generation to policy administration, premium collection, reporting, claims and more. Instead of focusing on admin, staff spend their time prioritising customer satisfaction and building stronger customer relationships.
With a single view of customers, TFG can now drive greater revenue and operational efficiency through its existing financial services products and easily build, sell and service new products without technical barriers.
Boosting inclusion
The Foschini Group, TFG has now started moving its insurance book onto Cape Town-based start-up Root’s digital policy administration system. This has changed how TFG develops, markets, sells and manages insurance policies for its existing store card account holders. The platform allows TFG’s customers to easily access their insurance policies, make claims, and pay their premiums, all in real-time.
The project has provided TFG with flexible pricing structures and the capability to easily build products that bundle solutions for customers according to individual risk.
The move is aimed at broadening financial inclusion in the South African market by making a wider range of financial services products accessible to its customers through TFG’s extensive stores network.
Khim Franciscus, Product Manager at TFG Insurance says Root has changed the work lives of the Group’s insurance staff. “The platform allows our customers to easily access their insurance policies, make claims, and pay their premiums, all in real-time. For our employees, the entire customer journey can be managed through one interface. Before, our back-office processes required us to work across multiple platforms with disparate spreadsheets and reports.”
“Now, we manage the full policy lifecycle on one system, from quote generation to policy administration, premium collection, reporting, claims and more. Instead of focusing on administration, we spend our time prioritising customer satisfaction and building stronger customer relationships,” Franciscus says.
Root’s product portfolio
Root is an end-to-end insurance platform that helps companies build, sell and manage digital insurance products in Africa, UK and Europe. Root is also a low-code platform as well that enables programmable insurance products, digital sales channels, digital insurance operations, and the ecosystem around this. Integrated APIs allow for automated workflows that get rid of time-consuming manual tasks and resulting in increased efficiency.
Root enables rapid design, build and integration of insurance at scale. As an enterprise-grade SaaS solution, Root powers insurance products for Tier 1 insurers, digital platforms, retailers and telcos. Root is establishing offices in London and has strong relationships with retailers, telcos and insurers in Southern Africa, serviced from Cape Town.
The Root platform provides the insurance industry with the following tools to build modern insurance products, sell insurance to customers digitally and centrally manage policies.
Low-code Product Workbench
Root’s low-code Product Workbench is a command-line interface tool to rapidly develop and launch insurance products. The Product Workbench empowers product teams to focus on building and testing differentiation with complete programmatic access.
RESTful APIs
Comprehensive, well-documented RESTful APIs support seamless integration into any digital channel. This includes existing and new customer journeys, insurer or partner branded products, and open access into the broader insurance ecosystem across the insurance value chain.
Policy administration system
The system manages the entire insurance lifecycle, from quote generation to claims processing, optimising data and workflows. It simplifies premium collection with versatile billing methods, offers automated reporting and analytics, streamlines claims handling, and automates customer communications. The Root Dashboard provides a front-end portal for policy administration by authorised users.
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