Sentro delivers for mid-range group insurers

In a little more than two years after setting up in New Zealand, insurance technology specialist Sentro has already made its mark providing custom cloud-based systems for the industry.

Friday, June 4th 2021, 3:54PM

by Matthew Martin

Sentro co-founder Hans Frauenlob.

Good Returns spoke to Sentro co-founder Hans Frauenlob about what the company offers its clients and why Sentro is starting to turn heads among mid-range insurance providers.

Sentro already works with Tower Insurance, Pinnacle Life, Delta and nib and is looking to expand its reach with Frauenlob saying they are also taking their insurance solutions overseas.

"We started our business here in New Zealand...and it's been a terrific base for us to start with...we are delighted to have our New Zealand based customers and hopefully more in future."

He says Sentro's product is aimed at the group insurers, their advisers and brokers and their customers.

"We wanted to provide the group insurer a range of tools that will allow them to work with their group product in the way that they wanted to and perhaps hadn't been able to up until now."

He says their proposition as a software solution for insurance companies offering group products to their customers is particularly compelling to what he refers to as mid-market insurers.

"Typically, the internal resources for those mid-range companies is different from the larger players with less in-house IT and operations resource draw.

"We think our platform is a great fit for those companies who don't want to be IT companies or spend too much on IT solutions."

He says Sentro aims to be as configurable as possible where customers can create and build a wide range of product lines while not imposing a data model on them.

In essence, Sentro is the IT company for their customers and can be adapted for each businesses particular needs.

"IT legacy issues can get in the way of companies who want to launch a new product where they could end up spending lots of money setting it all up using their existing systems that can be quite old and difficult to use.

"We want to remove constraints when companies want to launch a product quickly."

Staff at each company can also work with the Sentro software to create the process of building up a product, applying product rules, adding rate cards and putting them into group plans that are all end user configurable.

This does not mean a company's IT systems will be made redundant, they can be used side by side or together "...we want to be able to play well with others and enhance existing technology".

"Because we are cloud-native and configurable you can start on a piece of your operation and add to it as you move along. You don't have to do it all up front like we did 20 years ago."

Frauenlob says most group insurers recognise they would rather partner with a tech or software provider rather than be a software company themselves.

"What they want is the trust and confidence of their software partner and that's where we try and position ourselves."

Sentro does not look to offer a one-size-fits-all solution.

"Because we enable so much configurability from front to back we can make the end-user experience different for all of them."

Tags: innovation insurance Sentro tech innovation