Insurance Made Easy: APRIL Canada

A 2021 ICTA nomination

Toronto, ON (Apr. 9, 2021) – APRIL Canada has always had the strong belief that investing in technology is the best avenue to truly bring an excellent service to brokers. The benefits are, of course, internal because team members have more time to concentrate on tasks which require more expertise. They have more time to speak with brokers, be more responsive and more flexible in finding insurance solutions. As for benefits to brokers, APRIL believes that they can only be generated if the technology is harnessed by a co-creation effort with brokers.

When we started our APRIL ON quoting platform journey, we knew we wanted to have an in-house development team. Four people strong, the internal digital team was strengthened externally by user experience experts who helped us include our brokers at every stage of the development process. We conducted many broker interviews, trying to grasp their everyday challenges. We ran numerous user studies both on the design and on the functionalities of APRIL ON. Our goal was to offer an intuitive quoting platform that could enter brokers’ daily lives seamlessly and be quickly adopted thanks to immediate operational benefits.

APRIL ON was launched as APRIL employees and all our brokers were working from home, in the middle of lockdown. This was a challenge, but also an opportunity that showcased all the benefits and ease of use of a digital quoting platform. Brokers were able to quote at any time of the day. Their information being directly sent into our internal systems, making the underwriting much more straightforward for our teams.

Two of our driving principles behind APRIL ON was to provide brokers:

• with a premium estimate after the shortest number of questions possible (most of the times 5 questions). This enables the broker to know right away if the price point could fit their clients wishes;
• with a decline message (if applicable) as he/she fills our questionnaire. This is to avoid filling pages of information, sending them through and getting a decline message after some time;
• APRIL ON is able to automatically decline the risk “live” as the information is being filled/

We now have over 1.700 brokers actively using our platform and growing every day. We also work tirelessly to improve the tool as we continue to gather user feedback. Thanks to an Agile project team working in sprints, we work on constant improvements and the introduction of new tools and features.

We have seen our service level improve drastically over the last few months, as well as broker satisfaction. We also feel our team is even more tight knit towards a common goal of modernizing our ways of working as well as keeping our broker service at the top of our agenda.

Here is what one of our brokers had to say about APRIL ON: “APRIL has been without a doubt the best MGA to work with in my experience. Not only are they providing innovative quoting services through their APRIL ON site, but they are very easy to work with and quick to respond. For example, their launch of APRIL ON went extremely smooth from a broker perspective. The website is extremely straightforward and saves a ton of time filling out questionnaires and waiting for underwriting responses.”

Benefits:

Here are some of the KPIs we follow to track broker adoption of APRIL ON, digital business volume and service level:

• Since its launch 8 months ago, 1.700 brokers across Canada have created their account on APRIL ON. That number is rapidly growing thanks to the efforts of our Business development team, who is not only giving out credentials but also accompanying brokers as they take their first steps on our portal.
• Thanks to APRIL ON and its ever expanding list of quoting tools (personal marine, residential, personal auto, contractors, COC, student housing…), over 35% of our gross written premium is now handled online.
• Since June 2020, 71% of quotes in APRIL ON are quoted in less than 2 hours and 92% in less than one business day, which help us address the number one need from brokers, which is fast turnaround time.

About APRIL Canada

APRIL Canada Insurance is an insurance wholesaler (MGA). They work towards making insurance easy all over Canada. They exclusively deal with insurance brokers in order to satisfy their clients’​ needs on commercial, transport, automobile, residential and boats coverage. APRIL Canada offer a personalized service from a common mindset based on 4 values that guide our working habits: building trust, innovating, pushing boundaries and keeping things simple. For more information, please visit www.april.ca.

Source: APRIL Canada