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STANHOPE INSURANCE BUILDS SECURE COMPARISON WEBSITE FOR JEWELLERY AND LUXURY GOODS INSURANCE USING MENDIX LOW CODE SOLUTIONS
By harnessing Mendix’ s low code capabilities, Stanhope Insurance delivers a streamlined and secure way for customers to insure luxury valuables via a bespoke comparison platform.
Matthew Ashton, Director of Stanhope Insurance
A total of 90 % of motor insurance and 60 % of home insurance purchases in the UK are made through comparison sites. These kinds of platforms are a simple option, ensuring that buyers have a transparent way to compare policies from multiple providers. Insuring new or passed down luxury jewellery is also an important expense – so why had no comparison site offered this service yet?
Stanhope Insurance, an Ardonagh subsidiary, identified this market gap early on, understanding the need for a dedicated comparison site for jewellery insurance. Eager to rise to the challenge, they were keen to not let budget and technology limitations hinder them.
A diamond in the rough: how could Stanhope stand out?
To stand out in a sea of cookie cutter comparison sites, Stanhope wanted to give users a specialist product selection, with cover for engagement rings, necklaces, bracelets, fine art, wine collections, and even items stored in safety deposit boxes. This idea differs from the traditional insurance model, in which personal possessions’ insurance policies are tied to home insurance ones.
Standard insurance marketplaces present users with instant comparison services( to view offers from multiple insurers) and varied cover options( adapted to different risk profiles and user needs). Stanhope wanted to offer this and more, providing buyers with customised underwriting flexibility, as well as a consistent claims process. Most importantly, it was committed to giving customers truly bespoke policies, granting them access to coverage that wasn’ t available before.
One of the secret ingredients to meeting all of these requirements was identifying a cost-effective, rapid to prototype, deploy, and manage platform to create a user-friendly, high-responsive, easy to integrate and secure comparison website.
Low code proved to be the easiest way for Stanhope to fulfill their ambitions of creating this marketfirst comparison website. Low code platforms are an emerging technology, which support a less intensive and traditional software coding approach to bespoke application development. The technology relies on pre-built components and drag-and-drop tools, allowing for highlyconfigurable and less manually intensive building of applications. It is a very visual process, thus accelerating the time to upskill developers, and simplifying it for a wider range of users.
Stanhope worked alongside Ardonagh’ s Advisory Technology team to build a digital comparison site in under three months. The team chose to use Mendix, a Siemens business, as a platform, to streamline their application development. Together, the businesses worked on accelerating the development of this niche client-facing application.
Making the cut: navigating the low code process
Stanhope and Ardonagh utilised Mendix’ s application development capabilities. It was able to
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