How to sell UK insurance online

There's been a bundle of new rules and regulations for insurers who advertise online drip feed out in 2009. Most of which have come as a part of the joint FSA / OFT review of online marketing practices in general.

The ABI (Association of British Insurers) has teamed up with Which?, BIBA (British Insurance Brokers Association) and a bundle of comparison and aggregation websites to create 17 page guide on how these sites can ensure a positive customer experience.

Other than a few bits and bobs from the FSA, comparison sites have remained relatively un-regulated in the UK marketplace. Of course they have to adhere to FSA standards, however there have never been any rules, or even suggested rules of conduct, around how information is presented to consumers to ensure clarity.

This has been exploited, with some comparison sites listing providers who have pay the most higher than those that are actually a better consumer deal. This is not in the best interests of the consumer and wholly in the best interest of the comparison site.

The new guidelines, called "Ensuring Positive Customer Experiences of Buying Insurance Online", is an attempt to create a level playing field amongst comparison sites whilst putting the best interests of the consumer at the centre.

I'm all for these sort of initiatives. Anything that makes things simpler and clearer for the consumer in financial services is a good thing in my book.

As these are only guidelines, theres no real requirement for websites to follow them. I'd like to see some hard and fast regulation of this nature. It's not rocket science and would go a long way to ensuring consumers get the policies they really want.

You can have a look at the guidelines on the ABI website

Thanks to Phil MacKechnie (@akcamiwik) for the twitter tip off.

Is friendly local banking on the return?

Who have thought that Christmas time would bring news other than how much money we all spent on boxing day? Well there's two news pieces that are worth posting about. Here's the first.

Have you ever heard of a chap called Vernon Hill? No, not the lucky fellow who's married to Tess Daly. Vernon Hill, you know, he's that banking tycoon from the states?

You'd be forgiven for not hearing about him. I hadn't either until the middle of this month.

Vernon Hill is an entrepreneur who has made his name through setting up a number of banking institutions. Not all have been huge, but all have been successful. He took Commerce Bank on when it only had 1 branch, and sold it years later to Canada's TD Bank when it had....470 branches. That's some success!

His is success is based on his differing approach to banking. He is famous for creating retail banking that relies on service rather than interest rates to attract customer.

His wikipedia entry say this is a "New Style" - I'd disagree, this is more old style (certainly in the UK anyway), back to the days when bank staff knew you by your first name and personal banking, was in fact, 'personal'.

It's just been announced that FSA has granted Mr Hill's new banking venture, called Metro Bank, a banking license. making metro Bank the first UK banking start up in over 100 years.

You can read more about it on FT.com - the piece that really stands out for me (as a Gadget and Dog lover) is "They will also have gadgets to entertain children and will encourage customers to bring in their dogs."

I hope they let us BIG kids to play with the gadgets too!

I think this is an interesting development in UK banking. It's clear that 2010 is going to be a year of more friendly, customer centric banks and banking facilities being created. Tesco Bank will do this, following the "Every Little Helps" mantra.

With the growth of social media, and consumer conversation being so prevalent, and indeed encouraged, online. Larger banking brands, that are seen to be stuffy, will really need to work hard to grow positive public perception.

Make no mistake, the online battle ground for this will be Social Media.

2010 Predictions from bigmouthmedia

Every year we like to sit down and look at the predictions we made for 2009 and have a go at looking at whats 2010 holds in store for us.

I'm glad to say we were pretty much on the money with our predictions 2009.

Do you think we're doing well with our thoughts on 2010?

Bigmouthmedia's predictions for 2010

The Google Effect

Look at this:

That graph shows the share price over the last 5 days for the UK online property service, Rightmove. As you can see its took a bit of a hammering yesterday, dropping a substantial 60p in a day.

What you are seeing is The Google Effect.

So what happened? Well, rumours emerged that Google would be launching a property search service in the UK. They've been running it in Australia for the best part of a year, and its been very successful.

Rightmove charge £250 a month for estate agents to list their properties on the website, whilst, currently, Google property search is free in Australia.

You can understand the potential threat here can't you.

I wonder what the Google doubters are thinking now? It's clear to me that regardless of the Google price dropping by almost 50% during the harder times this year, that they are still the main threat to all online services. Their prowess for diversification is their key strategic strength.

Where is the innovation in PPC? Its here!

Innovation in PPC these days is pretty rare. Sure there are new bid management tools coming out regularly, but these are really taking existing bid management strategies and tweaking them. In general, there has been no real innovation there.

By innovation, I'm talking about changes that will truly give clients a significant competitive edge. Something that will blow current PPC strategies wide open and allow the possibility for a number of real-time, more abstract, factors to be accounted for and change PPC ad's accordingly.

Here's a make believe example. The weather in the UK is unpredictable (this summer is a prime example of that!). Imagine if you could take the current weather, in a particular location, and change your ad copy accordingly. In real time. I'll say that again *ahem*, IN REAL TIME.

Perhaps your selling camping clothes and equipment, the weather in the lake district takes an unexpected turn for the worse. It would be prudent to ensure PPC exposure in that area is talking less about the latest North Face summer hiking gear and more about the latest North Face protective clothing. So, spend is decreased on the summer wear, and increased on the protective wear. You're capitalising on an opportunity that didn't exist 10 minutes ago.

Having such a tool would align your PPC ad's to ever changing external factors and ensure your money is spent where you're going to get the best return. In turn, your ads would be more targeted. Ultimately, ensuring a significant increase in response and conversion rates.

It's all about the R.O.I.

The bigmouthmedia boffins have been theorising and pondering over this conundrum for months, and I'm very proud to say that they have developed a system that does all of the above and more.

We call it FUSE.

Do you have an inventory based business? Want to show mow many products you have left in your WIGIG (When Its Gone Its Gone) promotion, or how much stock you have left of Christmas' next big thing? FUSE can do that.

Are you a finance client who deals in FOREX? FUSE can show the current (the here an now!) exchange rates for currencies in your ad copy. FUSE can change spend on your account when a rate falls in favour of a more preferable rate. meaning your still going to get the conversions.

We've been running FUSE quietly on a number of clients over the summer. In every case, spend was used more efficiently and conversions increased. It worked out that over a two week period we saw a typical increase of 38% in conversion rates for clients that used FUSE.

With FUSE it doesn't matter what elements or changes happen in your marketplace,or even the world. it makes everything an opportunity. Ensuring R.O.I. at all times.

That's a big difference from the norm. That's a game changer. That's proper innovation.

Playing with Google Wave

Things have been pretty quiet around here. I've been away on annual leave and unfortunately Wonga World has been neglected slightly.

Anyway, I'm back now and raring to go.

One thing that happened while i was abroad was the preview launch of Google Wave. Google sent out 100,000 invites to allow a lucky few to access and play with a preview version of their new tool. I was very very lucky to be one of those who received an invite.

My first impressions are that it's a preview version, not even a beta I'd say. So when things don't work, its not because of a failing of a tool, just that its still pretty buggy. This wont last.

i have a few colleagues who had been invited to the preview too, so our first play was a collaborative conversation. We didn't do a huge amount other than use it as a fancy IM, where we talked to each other in parallel rather than the linear method all other IM's allow.

Being able to edit each others notes and comments is good, and I can see that this will be very useful if (when) its possible to edit documents with others.

Another feature of Wave is the ability to add any existing Google gadget into a Wave. With the tens of thousands of iGoogle gadgets available there's pretty much something for everyone. Additionally, Wave has its very own API that allows developers to create Wave specific extensions.

There are only a small amount of Wave specific extensions available in the preview, however it wont be long until there are many many more.

My favourite so far is the Maps extension, that allows Wave participants to collaboratively create a map, share directions, identify key landmarks on a Google map.

There's many more uses for Wave that I'm sure i haven't stumbled upon yet. I'm really looking forward to it opening up to the wider audience. It's a great tool, with a lot of potential. It also has a novelty factor (many users are selling invites to Wave on ebay. With some going for in excess of £10 each) just now, however this will grow to be an extremely well used and functional tool.

Like iGoogle, the open API will mean that expansion of the tool will be almost limitless too.

Google as an aggregator?

The web is awash today with news about a lawsuit between the US based aggregation website LendingTree and one of its technology providers, Mortech.

It seems that Mortech may have entered into an agreement with Google to provide them with technology that will allow Google to provide users with similar aggregation services.

Last year in the UK we saw a test that was being run for secured loans. This was called Google Merchant Search. This was where the top PPC spot was replaced with a drop down of secured loan amounts. This then redirected you though a list of providers and their relative loan rates for the user to choose from.

As a test it was small, only 1 in every 1000 searchers got the option and in order to apply for teh loan teh user was prompted to enter in telephone details, a time to receive a call and there chosen provider called them back. Pretty backward for the big G really. Each provider who took part in teh test paid £20 per lead.

This sounds like a whole new beast however. This sounds like, should it ever take off and reach UK shores, that the likes of Moneysupermarket, Tesco Compare and Compare the Market could have some veruy serious competition.

Google certainly has a lot of weight to throw around!

"The end is nigh! And it's all good!"

I cannot tell you how happy I am to actually start reading some positive financial services news in the main stream press. Some FS based good news is long overdue.

So what's the news? Well, according to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW) the current recession is "at an end".

Yes, that's a very brave statement.

The good news is that the survey numbers they have to back this up are significant, with it's Q3 Business Confidence Monitor (link to the report) showing Q3 2009 confidence recovering to levels we've not seen since Q3 2007.


These results also seem to be borne out by the FTSE today which, at the time of posting, was up by 1pc after closing 2pc up on Friday. Of course, the FTSE is most likely being buoyed by the recent economic recovery messages coming out of Asia and some European countries.

More good news, and some that's less reported on today, is the fact that ICAEW survey has highlighted a massive turn around in confidence in the 'Banking,Finance and Insurance' category which tops the table in confidence growth.


Here's what they have to say about the sectors improvement;

"The Q3 2009 BCM shows another marked improvement in confidence in the Banking, Finance & Insurance sector. The sector’s Confidence Index rose by a record 31.9 points, following a 30 point increase in Q2 as firms implemented strategies in response to the financial crisis. The sector is now the second most confident, in stark contrast to a year ago when confidence in the sector stood almost 12 points below the national average."

That's as positive a message you'll get on recovery.

So, as far as this survey is concerned, it does certainly appear that things are on the up.

Keep you fingers crossed.

Banks with Biiiig numbers

Well, there are some big numbers floating around in the financial press today.

• Barclays first half pre-tax profits were £2.984bn
• HSBC's first half pre-tax profits were £5bn

I've read some articles that are using these numbers as an excuse to fly the "recession is receding" flag. Well, in short - it's not. Or at least, these figures are not an indication of recovery - quite the opposite actually.

Barclays
Barclays first half profits were tipped to be £3.5bn, so it missed that by £0.5bn. In actual fact, it only managed to make the £2.984bn because of the strong performance of Barclays Capital. Without BarCap doubling their profits to £1.046bn, the Barclays group numbers would have been much lower. Barclays UK retail banking pre-tax profit dropped a massive 61% to £268m. In addition, the commercial banking arm had profits drop 42% to £404m

HSBC
HSBC also saw a massive drop in pre-tax profits which are down 51% on last years £10.8bn, to £5bn. Again, it was the global banking arm of HSBC that helped the overall group profits, they had had the greates first half profits results they've ever had with a massive £6.3bn. Putting this in perspective, in 2008 the Global banking arm posted a little over £2.5bn in their first half results. The bad news for HSBC is they had to increase their bad debt allocation to almost £14bn, £4bn more than this time last year, an indication that people are still struggling.

On the bright side, most economists are starting to come off the fence and suggest that the "bottom of the cycle" is in sight. A possible indication of confidence returning is of course house prices appear to be on the rise, with numbers being up 3 months in a row.

Interesting times.

Online marketing hints and tips videos

I've talked before about how much i enjoy my job. It's awesome.

Every once in a while I get the opportunity to do some properly awesome things on behalf of bigmouthmedia.

The most recent of these was getting to film 3 or 4 videos for YourBusinessChannel giving some high level online marketing advice for business'.

We recently popped all the bigmouth ones onto our bigmouthmedia channel on YouTube. Please feel free to have a look and ping back any comments or questions

As a wee taster, I've embedded one of the ones done by Finlay Clark, bigmouth's Senior Retail Strategist, below.

Watch this space for updates on when we produce and upload some more!

Chris