LMI Policy Comparison reached another major milestone today with the completion of the 15,000th policy comparison.

Few people realise just how many policies change in any given week. Over the past year it has averaged 25 per week!

On top of this new products are being launched such as Cyber Security and Insurance. With this pace of change it is not surprising that LMI PolicyComparion has reached this milestone.

This latest milestone (LMI PolicyComparison's 10th birthday celebration were held in October 2013) is something that the inventor of the service, Prof Allan Manning did not expect to occur so quickly. "When we launched the product we did so with only 3 classes of insurance, Business Packs, Rural Packs and Home/Contents and then with no more than 20 policies in each class. The demand for the service was so strong that we continued to add new product classes to meet our customer's requirements. We now cover 17 classes with more to come and we have more and more insurers and underwriting agencies wordings in the classes we do to the point where we now have 3,000 comparisons of current policies on the site at any one time", Manning said.

Acting Head of LMI PolicyComparison, Carl Greenhalgh, (long standing and well known head, Peter Jenkins is currently on sabbatical in Europe) stated: "a brokers or underwriters ability to go back in time and do comparisons of products on the day they were sold is unique to the LMI service. Other features that are well liked are the ability to compare by product feature as well as by company and the enormous amount of product training that the site provides."

Steve Manning, one of the BDM's and trainers for LMI's eServices explained that underwriting agencies see a noticeable increase in broker enquires in their product when they are featured on the LMI PolicyComparison site due to the fact that so many brokers visit the site each and every day. On average this is 1,500 per day".

Greenhalgh went on to explain: "from a broker's point of view the top three reasons why they like the comparison service are:

  • it allows them to easily explain the features and benefits of the coverage to their customer;
  • it allow them to do policy comparisons that they would not hope to find the time to do otherwise;
  • and it helps me get the best coverage for my client

"This ability to have the discussion move from 'price' to 'protection'; was one of my driving forces in developing the product in the first place and this research vindicates my decision. It gives me great satisfaction that what was a germ of an idea and started out as a paper based service on one sheet of A3 paper in February 2000 has become such a highly regarded and widely used every day research service to insurance professionals. The fact that it is now being used by brokers and underwriters in so many countries around the world is a testament to the professionalism of the LMI PolicyComparison research team for whose long and loyal service I cannot thank them enough" Manning said. "We of course not rest on our laurels with several new comparison templates being developed for products such as cyber risk and product recall".

Manning finished by explaining that "one other unintended consequence of our developing the comparison service was that we started to be approached to provide one off comparisons for unusual products that we do not compare on line and then to go one step further and draft policy wordings for underwriters, brokers and underwriting agencies. We now have experienced dedicated staff doing this full time due to the high demand.

By identifying a need in the market and acting upon it, LMI PolicyComparison and LMI PolicyDrafting have become major components to the LMI suite of technical and research services provided by the LMI Group.

To learn more please visit www.policycomparison.com or email expert@lmigroup.com.