Overview
Customers include those offering personal, commercial, and healthcare insurance. Acturis offers a range of products – from a broker trading system to eCommerce solutions – which it customizes slightly for each customer, making this a servitized product business model and not a work-for-hire business model.

History
Acturis was established in late 2000 by Theo Duchen and David McDonald, two former McKinsey partners, and the late Sir Brian Pitman, the former CEO and Chairman of Lloyds TSB. The first insurance brokers traded on the Acturis system in July 2002. By 2005, the company was cashflow positive, and by 2008 annual turnover exceeded £10m. By December 2014, the company had 12,000 users of its IT-based systems in the insurance industry.

Customers
Acturis offers its products as upgrades to, or new products for, the IT system of insurance companies located primarily in the UK and Europe.

Learn more about the Product Business Model

A dyadic transactional relationship where your good or service can be designed and delivered without prior interactions with the customer.

Engagement  — Value Creation Proposition
The company’s products help brokers and insurers in the general insurance industry to improve efficiency, productivity and client service. It’s IT products reduce customer costs on their existing IT infrastructure and management, simplify broker-insurer relationships by eliminating duplication of work between broker and insurer, and improve internal management efficiency by offering fully integrated IT systems. The products come with complex document templates, such as risk registers and insurer submissions, a library of over 300 pre-written reports within the Management Information suite and over 100 preconfigured risk capture templates for all the commonly traded general insurance policy types. Customers supply Acturis with relevant information about their IT infrastructure (e.g., how many users), and Acturis then tailors each of its product to the needs of each customer. Thus, Acturis operates a servitized product business model.

Delivery — Value Chain
Acturis products are “plug-in and go” systems – the data management occurs on Acturis’ own servers, and the software and firmware are designed to work with the clients’ existing infrastructure. New releases of the software are also automatically made available to customers, avoiding the need for complex changeovers and reinstallations. The model is scalable and flexible according to a customer’s business needs. For example, should a business expand suddenly through acquisition, new users can simply be added as and when required. Acturis servers are designed to handle the extra number of users and eliminate issues related to connecting multiple offices.

Monetisation — Value Capture
The Acturis model allows customers to pay as they use the system, and there are no large upfront costs for license fees, bespoke client-side servers or computer hardware. A customer simply connects and pays for the system on a monthly basis according to the number of users. Information on typical costs was not immediately available, although one user reported that the Acturis system costs the same as what his company was paying to maintain its own system.

Disclaimer — Written by Daniela Sazio and edited by James Knuckles under the direction of Prof Charles Baden-Fuller, Cass Business School. This case is designed to illustrate a business model category. It leverages public sources and is written to further management understanding, and it is not meant to suggest individuals made either correct or incorrect decisions. © 2016