Once again the remaining competitors in the reality show-style competition produced by the industry magazine FA News were split into two teams. Foster volunteered to lead Movers and Shakers, a risky move because the leader of a team can be made to carry the can if the team loses.
The teams had to come up with a comprehensive insurance solution for the transport start-up company Empty Trips. Run by Benji Coetzee, Empty Trips uses an online portal to link those with spare vehicle capacity (be it truck, train, plane or sea) with those who need goods transported. It is the first of its kind, a homegrown digital solution encouraging open competition and access to transport resources.
“The world has changed and platforms are allowing us to access resources that we’ve never been able to access before,” said Coetzee.
Today’s big disruptors own few assets, if any, with companies such as Uber and Airbnb their only assets are the software that they use to enable people to share various items, and the people who work for them, she said. Empty Trips is in a similar situation, not owning the cargo transported or the transporting vehicles.
This means that a new type of insurance has to be designed because the “insurable interest” is blurred, said guest judge Gareth Joubert, MD of Hollard Trade Credit. He said the two teams had interesting, and very diverse, approaches.
Movers and Shakers came up with a product that looked at Empty Trips’ cyber-liability, including the risk of hacking and the loss of subscribers’ personal information, and also at carriers’ liability (mostly loss and damage). They argued that their product’s comprehensiveness would attract clients.
Judge Simon Colman, head of commercial liability at SHA, said the competition is getting “incredibly tight. We deliberated longer today than we have on any of the other tasks.”
Watch the drama unfold on this YouTube video. You can follow The Insurance Apprentice on Twitter at @TheInsApp, and there’s a Facebook page too.
The winner – who will be announced at the end of March – gets a bursary from the Insurance Sector Education and Training Authority and will be going to Lloyd’s of London in the UK for a week to get the low-down on the esteemed insurance market’s business and systems. There will also be some sightseeing.
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