ILC ARTICLE

ILC Industry Leader Interview: David Vella, Executive Director UK & Ireland – GT Motive

1st June 2022

Which areas of business do you think offer the greatest opportunities right now, and how are you capitalising on them?

For many years the UK Market has been closed off to one single provider. Simply, offering the market competition is bringing massive opportunities for businesses at the moment. People want new technologies; they want to be given new ideas and, of course, ways to save money. 

In the current climate, everyone including insurers and repairers, are doing all they can to minimise costs and drive operational efficiencies because time is money. Being transparent with pricing is key for a lot of businesses we work with. Ensuring they have full visibility of pricing in order to plan and budget effectively during these times of inflation. 

We’ve also seen a move to remote working, something which many businesses are keen to continue with following the pandemic. It’s what employees want now, so employers have to be flexible and in order to be flexible they must work with systems that reflect this too. That’s why we’re seeing such a shift to cloud-based services, it’s something we will see a lot more of in the future, particularly in our industry.

How have you added resilience and adaptability to your business over the past few years?

We’ve been adaptable since day one. Its what we pride our-selves on.

The way people are working today (and have been for the past 2 years) out of necessity, is the way we’ve been working from the start; flexibly and collaboratively. 

We’re able to work this way due to the cloud-based applications that allow for automatic updates, with enhanced data security and protection to reduce downtimes. 

However, this also means we need to be adaptable to new trends and business needs, to reflect these within our products and services to ensure we are helping our customers stay resilient through these changing times. Over the past few years we’ve grown the UK team to include highly experienced, highly skilled people from the automotive sector, and it’s our talented team that help us grow and learn each and every day to remain at the forefront of innovation.

How has your business philosophy evolved since you began in the industry?

We’ve always been a process driven business. Its all about the people you surround yourself with, engaging your team and understanding what’s going on at every level, to get a true reflection of operations. If we are able to make our team more efficient then we’re able to pass this onto our customers too. Combining this with the use of the latest technologies and using this to stay ahead of the curve. This collaborative philosophy is now such a key aspect for GT and it plays a part in everything we do.

For me, it comes down to the 3 P’s… People, product, and process. If you can strengthen these 3 elements of business and get them working harmoniously, then you can be sustainable. 

What is the greatest myth about the insurance industry, and what is the fact?

I think in terms of public perception, it all comes down to money. The myth is that everyone is making lots of money, but in reality, businesses run on tight margins, particularly at the minute, in a time of mass inflation. 

Businesses are focused, more than ever, on increasing efficiency and minimising costs. It’s a tough time for everyone within the automotive industry, and it’s only going to get tougher, so transparent and predictable pricing is so important. It’s a key focus for us to ensure the market can benefit from transparent pricing and our ‘Pay per use’ pricing is a game changer, particularly for repairers. The more we can do to help cut costs for our customers, the better for everyone.

Consumer attitudes are changing – how is the insurance industry evolving to meet their demands?

Consumers now want and expect things at a touch of a button. 

That’s why technology now needs to play such a huge roll in insurance, to not only meet the demand of claimants, but also to give all stakeholders full visibility of the claim.

Consumers expect processes to fit into their ‘norm’ and our industry needs to evolve in order to fit this. That’s why we focus so much on flexibility and online services to satisfy this need for immediate gratification.

The more we, as an industry, can do in an automated way, the better. If we can work closely with insurers to support what their consumers want, then we can enhance their proposition to manage claims remotely and efficiently and overall make the claims experience better.