The spread of the scores here was comparable with the spread of the total scores: on average 39 per cent with a maximum score of 63 per cent and a minimum of 17 per cent. Almost all insurers stated their commercial objectives in terms of premium income and ultimate profit. Few insurers stated how they would achieve these objectives by acquisition of new customers and/or developing existing customers. Objectives in terms of (maximum acceptable) lapsing were almost never stated. Retention policies measured by customer segment, based on customer value, were nowhere to be found. This was remarkable since the relevance of retention activity and the optimum investment in retaining customers depend on the current (and future) value of these customers.

Although almost every insurer stored detailed transaction data over a long period, few actually analysed it for value development of customers or for lapse risk. From this study, it seems that only 'direct writers', who only know their customers from their databases, did this type of analysis of customer data.

We came across a best practice at one of the participants, which used data mining to predict lapse. These predictions were pretty accurate. However, it proved hard to use this information to prevent lapsing, because the letter triggered by lapse prevention activity increased the probability of lapsing as opposed to the situation where no letter was sent!

Particularly with business-to-business insurers and those selling through intermediaries, there was some insight into value per customer, and service is differentiated on the basis of this. This service differentiation consists mostly of some form of dedicated account management. Direct insurers who differentiate do so mostly by means of a glossy company magazine, sent to the more valuable customers. No companies had insights into individual customer profitability. Insurers who work with intermediaries and see them as their prime customers have most insight into what these various intermediaries bring in and what they cost to support. Most insurers - except for those who have just bought and implemented CRM software - do not have data on contacts with the customer. So most insurers cannot use this contact data to calculate profitability using activity-based costing.

Business-to-business insurers score well on understanding the competition. This is partly because customers do their own research to find the best insurance offers. Insurers need to have this knowledge themselves.

Planning of customer development scored highly, not only for business-to-business insurers, but also for intermediary insurers. Having fewer customers than the typical direct insurer, these insurers had high scores on questions that had to do with 'key account planning'.