For the second time in four years, Saxon Insurance has received international recognition for its efforts in leveraging technology to advance its business operations.

Saxon was presented with the Celent Model Insurer Award for ‘Operational Excellence in IT Management’ at the annual Celent Model Insurers and Model Bankers Awards held on Tuesday, April 4 in Boston, Massachusetts. Saxon was among the top three in a field of over 80 insurance companies that were nominated for this award and won in the category with major insurers Aflac and MassMutual.

The Celent Model Insurance Award recognizes best practices in technology usage in different business areas critical to success in insurance. Celent is an international research and advisory firm that helps financial institutions to develop business and technology strategies. It is a division of Oliver Wyman, Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies.

Saxon was also a runner-up in the 2014 Celent Awards in the “Legacy and Eco-System Transformation’ category and the company’s technology initiatives were profiled in Celent’s report, ‘Model Insurer 2014: Case Studies of Effective Technology Use in Insurance’.

For the 2017 award, Saxon was recognized for establishing a cloud-based, technology- driven system for its core insurance operations, human resources, accounting/finance and customer communications. Using a third-party cloud provider, the wholly Caymanian-owned insurer has been able to “go global”, while supporting local operations with consistent technology expertise to host and maintain its applications, as well as reduce its footprint. The migration to a virtual set-up began in October 2015 and was completed in September 2016.

“At the heart of our technology focus is a strong recognition that as insurers, we must be innovative and responsive in meeting the changing needs of our customers as and when they occur,” stated Saxon CEO Brian Williams. “At Saxon, we have worked with some of the best technology providers in the business, whose services have seamlessly aligned with our business, enabling us to achieve operational milestones and global recognition, such as this Celent Award. We will continue to innovate, with the goal of always achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction and business excellence,” he added.

Saxon’s move to a cloud-based system has provided significant benefit, which has seen average transaction times decrease by 50 percent. The company has achieved double digit growth with same level of staffing, along with a 30% cost reduction in hosting expenses, 80% reduction in first response time to emails/social media and a significant drop in staffing costs.

“The whole team is hugely proud of this international recognition. And although it’s a great honour to receive such a prestigious award, for us it is just validation that the direction we are going in is the right one. We will never stop improving,” stated Nick Brierly, Chief Financial Officer.

Saxon’s focus on technology has also led to the introduction of telematics to monitor driving behaviour, with results used for rating and decision making purposes for the specific client.

Last year, Saxon also introduced drones to inspect homes after an initial insurance policy is purchased. This allows the company to get high-definition imaging of a property, calculate the square footage of the home, and spot damages of which the insured may not be aware. Based on the square footage reading, Saxon can determine if a home is underinsured and better advise clients so they don’t get penalized by underinsuring the home’s value.