Arkel Underwriting, part of the Atec Group, is working with Open GI as their technology partner to bring their products to wider market.
Arkel was originally formed in 2019 as the specialist MGA for non-standard insurance brokers Ceta – but soon saw the opportunity to expand its footprint and increase distribution through other third-party brokers.
Finding a Software House
Atec’s Distribution Director Ant Sherlock explains: “Arkel operates within the non-standard personal and SME commercial UK markets. We’re relatively new to the market but we’re dynamic, we’ve got good insurer capacity behind us - and we’ve got great non-standard personal and residential let products. We wanted to bring those to more third-party brokers, and the natural thing to do was find a software house to enable that.
“For us, Open GI was an obvious choice. For a start, myself and the team all knew the Core and Transactor platforms from previous roles, so we knew Open GI was reliable, flexible, and adaptable – which was exactly what we needed. What’s more, they’ve built a fantastic community of 500+ brokers that were exactly the audience we wanted to reach out to and transact with.
Wide Footprint
“The wide footprint and Open GI’s broad question set really compliments our niche products, and makes it really easy for brokers to find us and use us.
“In fact, working with Open GI overall is just really easy. We know the team really well and have always found them responsive and supportive. They’ve really taken the time to get to know us, understand our products and wider business goals, and are fully aligned to our strategy of growth.
“We’re not a big insurer, but we’re ambitious. Over the next few years, we’re looking to expand our distribution, expand our policy count and our premium volumes – and Open GI are central to those plans.
Sales and Marketing
“We’re currently working closely with their Sales and Marketing teams to further improve our brand awareness and onboard more brokers. In the future we also want to look at how we leverage data to understand and respond to the market, and things like Insurance Hosted Pricing to give us finer control over our pricing strategy.
“Working with Open GI we know we’ve got the right partner and the right relationship to take us into the future.”
