A Power Station case study.

Open Minds:
Tapping Into Financial Sector Marketing Expertise

Royal & SunAlliance, the market-leading UK-based insurer, knows that a strong customer focus is critical to customer retention, particularly among the large corporate and multi-national customers.

Having identified Customer Management as one of its top three core competencies, the company is now driving a series of initiatives to transform the whole organisation's approach.

Within R&SA's Specialist Businesses, which specialise in dealing with large corporate customers, one of the first steps in this transformation process was to establish a Customer Management team.

Specialist Businesses, with its main management and underwriting functions based in the City of London, then called on the expertise of The Power Station.

The newly appointed Head of Customer Management asked us to put together a business plan and organisational concept for the new function. Part of this plan was to set up three focus areas: Key Customer Management, Broker Management, and Marketing and Communications.

R&SA needed to act quickly. Market conditions were favourable, creating a good opportunity to make an impact with customers and brokers, but there was no time to wait while people with the right skills and experience were recruited on a permanent basis.

The solution was to ask The Power Station to set up and run the Marketing and Communications function for a six-month period.

Account Directors with a deep understanding of the finance and insurance sectors, quickly developed a Marketing and Communications Plan and agreed a set of objectives in the initial period of implementation.

These included the creation of a theme to communicate R&SA's strengthened focus on customers, and the launch of this new approach at AIRMIC Conference and Exhibition in June - the major UK event for the insurance and risk management community.

We devised the 'Open Minds' theme, which illustrated that R&SA is listening to its customers; is approachable and adaptable; is in good shape for the future; and committed to establishing industry-leading customer management.

An integrated marketing and communications programme was also required to build on the conference and take the initiative forward to a Customer Event in October.

Open Minds created a great deal of interest among key customers and brokers who visited the exhibition stand and took away the supporting marketing material. We built on this by developing a web based discussion forum that encouraged debate on hot topics of the day - such as terrorism cover, corporate governance and the cost and availability of casualty insurance.

A linked public relations programme was initiated in the insurance and risk management trade press, supported by internal communications within
R&SA offices to encourage a wider understanding of the theme's messages among staff. We used a variety of tools - including staff events, office exhibitions, workshops and intranet briefings as well as presentations to the business units.

Chris Smith, Head of Customer Management, said at the AIRMIC Conference that Open Minds was the start of closer relationships with customers, who would be encouraged to talk more openly about what they expect from R&SA.

He said: "The programme has enjoyed high visibility and made significant impact on how we are perceived by customers and brokers. The Power Station helped us open the dialogue with customers - the key now will be for us to act on what we hear."

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