The UK commercial insurance sector remains one of the most digitally underserved areas in general insurance. Whilst the personal lines market has undergone significant digital transformation, commercial lines, in particular SME products, continue to be dominated by legacy systems, manual broker-led distribution, and slow, costly development cycles.
Of course, where pockets of unaddressed potential exist, there are market opportunities ripe for disruption.
Why is this market still waiting for impactful digitisation?
The UK commercial insurance market accounts for approximately £37 billion GWP annually. whilst direct and embedded are gradually gaining traction, direct-to-consumer (D2C) distribution currently represents just 7.9% of GWP, and the majority - 82% of that business -is still placed through brokers.
Why?
Lack of competition is a key reason. One general insurance provider currently dominates D2C. Whilst others have dipped their toes into the market, there are in reality very few players in the space. The main reason for this is technical capability.
Most commercial platforms are broker-centric by design, and one software house has long dominated commercial distribution in the market has very limited or next to no support for D2C distribution. This effectively locks out insurers and MGAs from exploring new distribution channels such as embedded, affinity, and digital direct sales.
This is the D2C commercial nut that no one has truly cracked, until now.
Why is now the moment?
Several key disruptive forces are converging to make this the ideal moment for digitisation in commercial insurance:
Against this backdrop, the traditional model of launching a product across channels that requires multiple disconnected builds feels increasingly outdated.
We spot a gap in the market, do you?
Introducing a better way to fill the D2C commercial gap
IS2’s newly launched RAPID[SW1]
(Rapid API Distribution) platform is purpose-built to solve this exact problem. RAPID removes the traditional friction (long lead times, high costs, and bespoke builds) that have made commercial and niche lines difficult to scale digitally.
With RAPID, insurers and MGAs can initiate a ‘build it once’ approach - creating a product and quickly distributing it via API across all channels, from embedded platforms, affinity partners, and importantly direct-to-customer - maximizing ROI from a single build.
Simon Pritchard, Managing Director at IS2, explains:
"Commercial and niche markets have been digitally underserved and represent a massive market opportunity for insurers, brokers and MGAs, but they have forever grappled with questions on how they connect commercial products to more platforms without duplicating time, cost and effort; how they can maximise MGA distribution but still retain control, and how to reduce the complexity of digital distribution at scale and get a better ROI in the Commercial space. RAPID solves these issues and more than that, it finally levels the playing field. Until now, multi-channel distribution at speed was only a consideration for the largest carriers. With RAPID, insurers of all sizes can integrate quickly and unlock the huge distribution potential in Commercial and niche markets that has previously been out of reach.”
The result is that insurers and MGAs retain full ownership of their products whilst expanding their distribution footprint cost-effectively.
A proven use case of success
IS2 has already proven this model with a leading insurer, helping them establish a successful multi-channel strategy that now combines direct, broker, and software house distribution all from a single build.
The benefits at a glance
Insurers and MGAs that embrace a “build once, deploy everywhere” mindset will be better positioned to:
And crucially, they won’t be locked into just one distribution model. RAPID supports all of them - brokers, direct, embedded, affinity, and beyond.
RAPID is the key to cracking the D2C commercial opportunity.
Discover how RAPID can help your business expand its commercial distribution footprint across every channel without the delay and complexity and with a better return on investment.
Contact a member of our team today.