CEO Today UK Awards 2021

31 CEO TODAY UNITED KINGDOM AWARDS 2021 Insurance Tony Deacon is CEO, Chairman and co- founder of Policy Expert, a digital insurer born from the desire to disrupt the stagnant UK personal lines market. Following his success with online SME insurance broker Simply Business – one of the UK’s highest profile insurance start-up success stories of the 21st century – Tony and his management team were inspired to reshape the home insurance experience. They embarked on a journey to develop an agile, purpose-built technology platform, unburdened by legacy systems and optimised to support a mass-market insurance proposition engineered for rapid growth. The result was Policy Expert, founded in 2010 using proprietary technology and advanced data science techniques to deliver clear and transparent policies, fair pricing and attentive customer service. Crucially, Tony and his team were intent on maintaining complete control of the end-to-end process from pricing through to claims. By introducing optimal pricing, a frictionless user experience and first-rate customer service, Policy Expert has created a best-in-class home insurance proposition that has scaled rapidly over the past decade. Today it ranks among the UK’s biggest home insurance providers, selling over 3.5m policies to date and set to reach one million customers before the end of 2021. This growth has already given Policy Expert a larger share of its domestic home insurance market than US insurtech poster child Lemonade. A true ‘digital-first’ business, Policy Expert has been enabled, not encumbered, by technology with its growth ambitions supported by an agile, cloud-based platform. Free from the burdens of monolithic mainframes or third-party dependencies, Tony has empowered his team to make fleet-footed decisions to drive sustained customer acquisition. Throughout the business, this decision- making is fuelled by millions of datapoints, with Policy Expert’s data scientists being capable of generating insights from reserves of data which established insurers simply aren’t equipped to handle. The business is driven by a desire to challenge the status quo and seize new opportunities to improve the customer experience of insurance. Tony and his team have delivered a number of major advances and enhancements in Policy Expert’s first ten years of existence. It was among the first UK insurers to offer fixed rate premiums to protect policyholders against annual price increases – allowing customers to fix their insurance payments in the same way as their mortgage or utility costs. It has also been committed to jargon-free policy wording from day one and was one of the first insurers accredited by the Plain English campaign. Its ‘consumer champion’ mindset is fuelled by an unrivalled understanding of policyholders’ needs and has been recognised through consistent customer advocacy and industry accolades. Policy Expert was ranked as the UK’s number one rated home insurer in 2013 within two years of selling its first policy, based on independent customer reviews via Review Centre. It has held that position ever since by maintaining and enhancing customer and claims service standards through a period of rapid growth. Policy Expert was also named ‘Customer Champion of the Year’ at the Insurance Times Awards 2019 and has picked up a host of UK and European awards for its technology, customer and employee experience. Looking ahead, Tony and his team are focused on expanding Policy Expert’s reach to help more customers save money through insurance policies that are fairly priced and reward loyalty. They acquired motor insurance firm Sure Thing! in 2019 and have made rapid progress in migrating its customers to Policy Expert’s best-in- class technology platform, rebranding it in the process. While other insurers have found their operations disrupted by the pandemic, the business has continued to acquire new customers and achieve retention rates that far exceed the market average. With greater synergies to unlock between home and motor, plus technological enhancements such as voice activation and open banking set to impact the insurance market, Policy Expert under Tony’s leadership is clearly established as one to watch as it accelerates into its second decade. About Tony Deacon “Policy Expert was ranked as the UK’s number one rated home insurer in 2013 within two years of selling its first policy.”