Falcon Insurance positions itself during the pandemic |12 October 2020
Darren Roberts
A relatively brand new addition to the local financial services sector, Falcon Insurance is celebrating its 5th anniversary in quite a tumultuous year of pandemic, lockdowns, restrictions and global economic crisis.
Nonetheless, Falcon Insurance is forging ahead with its contingency plan in hand to better position itself in the local, regional and international markets as well as to provide novel products for its customers.
The managing director of Falcon Insurance, Darren Roberts, talks about extending the company鈥檚 portfolio, its main developments in 2020, and Covid-19 in an interview with 91香蕉视频 NATION. The company presently offers a range of insurance covers for property, health, liability, motor, marine and yachts and professional indemnity among others.
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91香蕉视频 NATION: Falcon Insurance has been operating in 91香蕉视频 for five years, how has those five years been?
Darren Roberts: 鈥淲e have had a very good strong start and have performed really well in the market here, and I think we have earned our place as one of the well-known quality insurance companies serving the local community. Our strengths have always been property, motor, marine and business, and now with Covid-19 it has heavily moved towards the health insurance coverage.
鈥淔alcon is a 91香蕉视频-based business and our business model employs local talent. It is a model based on nurturing and growing these talents.鈥�
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91香蕉视频 NATION: It is a bitter-sweet anniversary marked by the Covid-19 pandemic and its impacts, how is Falcon Insurance managing the situation?
Darren Roberts: 鈥淭he insurance industry is not like any other industry and it has been affected greatly by Covid-19. The issue with insurance is that we are intrinsically linked internationally through reinsurance and various other markets including foreign exchange which has led to economic strain.
鈥淏ut Falcon is growing through this uncertain period. We take the view that we want to offer the highest quality, internationally recognised insurance locally.鈥�
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91香蕉视频 NATION: How far does Falcon鈥檚 medical insurance take into account Covid-19?
Darren Roberts: 鈥淲e have included four Covid-19 covers to our medical insurance policies, including medical evacuation. So if Covid-19 does return to 91香蕉视频, our policy holders are protected with a robust medical policy, 100% backed by the international medical insurance giant AXA.
鈥淎ll our policies will cover medical costs although quarantine does not fall into that cost per se 鈥� isolation may, depending on the circumstances. If you develop Covid-19 and you have complications, what our medical policy does is allows you to go to a hospital of your choice worldwide, depending on the choice of policy chosen. If someone develops life threatening complications which cannot be treated locally, it will also cover medical evacuation to a health facility overseas.
鈥淚n addition, Falcon Insurance has also launched a child only medical policy. Prior to this, children could only be added to their parents鈥� or guardians family package. These new developments just give people a real peace of mind, especially in these uncertain times.鈥�
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91香蕉视频 NATION: What are some of the measures being undertaken in light of the new normal?
Darren Roberts: 鈥淚nitially like many local businesses we had a very rushed contingency plan having to plan a lot in a short amount of time when the border closures and lockdown was announced. The good thing was, we already had a disaster recovery procedure in place which was adapted to the unique challenges of the virus. We now have what we feel is a strong and practiced contingency plan which can be tweaked now and then, should the need arise.
鈥淲e also invested heavily at the birth of our business with a very extensive and robust computer system, our clients can actually go on to our website and input all of their details so they do not have to come into the office for face to face transactions. We can transact with our customers remotely, wherever they are 鈥� we can e-mail them their policies and they can effect online payments.
鈥淚n light of the economic downturn, Falcon is furthermore assisting many of its policy holders in regards to their payment plans. We recognise that this is an unknown and unforeseen circumstance so we are reacting to that. We are also redeveloping our policies now which will really help the local economy to keep going.
Sadly, we have lost some business since people are not renewing their policies at the moment. We deal with a lot of guest houses and hotels which have been financially devastated by the downturn and not surprisingly costs are cut as we simply wait for the tourists to come back, rightly or wrongly insurance cover to some of these establishments has been a casualty of financial cut backs.
鈥淔alcon and 91香蕉视频 has also lost a number of expatriate clients who have left the 91香蕉视频, with their contracts being ended. But we were ready for this, the key for us now is to react fast and diversify in order to create new business opportunities.
鈥淭he tourism industry has obviously been hit very badly and we are now looking to bring new policies to the market such as sickness and unemployment cover, redundancy covers and loan protection policies to provide some form of financial protection and comfort to customers.
鈥淲e are reacting and using this period of uncertainty to really show our clients that we are here providing peace of mind to the people and businesses of 91香蕉视频 and aim to help in our own way.
鈥淭he good news is, I really do believe that there is so much talent here and even with the downturn in tourism industry, the local workforce in that industry has transferrable skills that can be brought over into financial services.
鈥淐ovid has highlighted the financial issue we face with having so much of the economy reliant on tourism that I really want Falcon and our industry counterparts to champion the financial services sector of 91香蕉视频, there is no reason why we cannot become one of the jewels in the offshore services market globally, which will also benefit the economy with greater stability, remembering that financial services does not need ports or borders.
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91香蕉视频 NATION: What are your plans for foreign/offshore business?
Darren Roberts: 鈥�91香蕉视频 is only so big and it was never Falcon鈥檚 goal to look at 91香蕉视频 only; we want international business. Covid-19 among other conditions has given us a lot of opportunities to bring international business into 91香蕉视频.
鈥淭his would mean significant numbers of new insurance business coming into 91香蕉视频 and stimulating the economy, it would also bring much needed foreign exchange coming into the country and we will create more job opportunities for local people.
鈥淔alcon has already begun piloting new lines of business to offshore clients and the figures from the last few months have been very positive; we are definitely starting to get some great traction. I think that good news stories like these show that it is not all doom and gloom 鈥� there are opportunities out there, we just need to rethink how we transact business and seize the moment.
鈥淥ne example of this, the UK is really struggling with lack of insurance capacity at the moment. The big insurers over there are going through Brexit and many other economic issues including Covid-19 and there is a distinct lack of capacity for certain types of risk in the UK and Europe, and we have taken that opportunity. We have strengthened our policies here so that they meet the standards of the UK and while we cannot advertise our services or sell our policies in the UK or Europe, clients from these regions can now buy certain insurance policies from us in 91香蕉视频
The fact we are now gaining international clients not only puts Falcon on the map it also creates a positive reflection on 91香蕉视频 as an international trusted insurance market
鈥淲e are hoping to grow the offshore market and not just to the UK but we would like to venture into Africa and the Indian Ocean territories. Our goal is to make Falcon one of the gems in the Indian Ocean for insurance. Hopefully rather than buying insurance covers in different countries, people can come and buy insurance here.鈥�
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91香蕉视频 NATION: What would differentiate Falcon from other insurance companies in the region?
Darren Roberts: 鈥淚鈥檇 like to think that we would come with a UK service and standards approach and coming from the UK, I like to think that I have brought some of those skills and knowledge with me. It means we can create new policies and ideas for the evolving market here. Our international approach is backed by the likes of Lloyds, Swiss Re and AXA which are huge, well-trusted insurance brands. That makes us a little bit unique.鈥�
鈥淐urrently the majority of our clients are locally based. I think the misconception is that we are a big international brand but we are not. We are a 91香蕉视频 born and bred insurance company, and 90% of our clients are local and obviously we do have some expatriate businesses that comes in organically.
That said we do not want to just take the market share of our competitors, we want to stimulate the market and bring in new products and grow local business.鈥�
鈥淭his is our home and the local clientele base is the most important part and through bringing in new premiums for the offshore, we will be able to lower the prices here because we will get the balance coming in from elsewhere. From this we can then introduce policies that did not exist here before because we did not have the critical mass required for the pool of insurance premiums.
鈥淥ne of our main concerns at present is the cost of claims locally with repair costs increasing weekly due to the forex issue. At some point if this continues, Insurers will either dramatically increase premiums or make cover very restrictive for risks such as motor & marine insurance.
鈥淲e understand that this is not the fault of our policyholder but that of the market conditions created by an unforeseen event of the pandemic. Our philosophy at present is to try and offset these increases in claim costs against new offshore premium in order to retain current pricing.
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91香蕉视频 NATION: So what is the plan for staff and are you planning any redundancies?
Darren Roberts: 鈥淲e have a great team at Falcon and they are the reason for our success and we need to remember this in times of difficulty, we have no intention of any pay cuts or redundancies and will do everything in our power to ride through this period of uncertainty. Falcon has made sure we have diversified and been innovative in our approach to ensure policy holders and the team are secure. Right now we have 15 employees and consultants but we hope to reach around 25 鈥� 30 over the next few months, if everything goes to plan.鈥�
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91香蕉视频 NATION: It sounds very promising, can you summarise?
Darren Roberts: Falcon is a strong and flourishing business that has a great future ahead despite the current economic difficulties and I believe that having the flexible and fully supportive local team around the company鈥檚 management has allowed us to be proactive in our products, policies and service standards.
We are continuing to forge ahead with our plans and development and I strongly believe we will become one of the 鈥�91香蕉视频 Blue Chips鈥� creating job opportunities locally with many more product developments and business strategies to follow.
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Interview by Elsie Pointe
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