Founded in 1905, Benenden Health exists for the sole benefit of its members and remains a not-for-profit society. With over 800,000 members, its vision is to be the UK’s leading healthcare community and make life better for all its members and wider society by taking some of the strain off the NHS. Like many companies, Benenden recognises the need to stay ahead of a rapidly changing market and be able to offer flexible propositions to meet the needs of its existing and future members. Though very successful in growing to be a large player in the Health market, parts of the underlying technology estate were not fit to deliver further growth. A technology market scan was needed to help the Benenden team understand the art of the possible in order to deliver on their strategy.
As a recognised expert in the field of insurance technology and operations, Altus was engaged by Benenden to help explore the market for suppliers who could provide a replacement Member Admin System. The platform suppliers not only had an opportunity to demonstrate their own unique offerings, but also needed to meet some critical Benenden requirements that were outlined in an RFI document.
Altus utilised its knowledge of the Insurance Technology market to review and compare over 50 Policy Admin System suppliers in order to produce a Long List to go to a first stage RFI. This knowledge and insight has been assembled into an easily searchable Insurtech directory over the past 15 years. Altus has deep relationships across the financial services market and was able to select “best fits” across the spectrum of suppliers, from long established players to new Insurtech challengers. The 14 suppliers on the Long List were well placed to meet the high level Benenden requirements and, just as importantly, were the right fit for the company culture.
Working closely with the Benenden team, an RFI document was produced that would allow suppliers to understand what Benenden wanted from a replacement system as well as the context of the Benenden business. A number of detailed requirements workshops focussing on Payments, Products and Pricing were run by the Altus team to produce scenario diagrams that were shared with the suppliers.
A deep dive on the current IT architecture was also carried out, that allowed the Altus team to gather information about the key integration points that a supplier would need to make into the Benenden estate.
Altus ran these internal workshops remotely (due to the COVID restrictions) utilising online whiteboard technology to create a workshop environment. Outputs were documented in a simple, easy to understand form, that would allow suppliers to quickly understand Benenden and where they could help.
Suppliers were given the RFI pack and time to digest the key requirements. Altus then ran multiple supplier workshops, with the Benenden SME project team, via MS Teams. Supplier workshops were focussed on the key areas captured, ensuring the team were able to dig deeper than traditional supplier sales demos, and get a good, detailed understanding of the match between a new platform and their needs. Altus conducted post workshop team response surveys and used these, along with our independent market view, to produce a final pack with well documented conclusions and recommendations, together with a preferred supplier list for the next RFP stage. Combined with 5 year estimated supplier costs, this provided Benenden with the market knowledge they sought, ultimate reassurance around supplier choices and a clear path to move forward to the next stage.
