Regulatory confidence at scale: how a leading UK insurer hit 96.5% quality with 478 new agents
Regulatory confidence at scale: how a leading UK insurer hit 96.5% quality with 478 new agents
Industry
A leading UK warranty and insurance provider partnered with Huntswood to build a high-quality complaints handling and contact centre operation from Huntswood's Durban site. The client wanted to deliver excellent customer outcomes and regulatory assurance at scale, while keeping operational resilience and cost efficiency front and centre, all within a fast-moving timeline.
The Results:
>80%
Reduction in cost per interaction
(from ~$18 to ~$3.50)
<30
Days from engagement start to full live operations
~$4M
In annual savings
~94%
QA scores consistently maintained every month
The challenge
The client needed a partner capable of standing up a large-scale, compliant operation quickly, without cutting corners on quality. Specifically, they required:
- A fully assured complaints handling approach — one that was closely aligned with UK regulatory expectations, given the scrutiny complaints processes face under FCA rules and the potential for escalation to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS)
- Rapid recruitment and deployment of a skilled team — the ability to scale up a competent, well-trained workforce quickly enough to meet business-as-usual (BAU) service standards from day one, rather than building capability slowly over time
- Faster speed to competence and productivity — new starters needed to reach effective performance levels quickly, minimising the usual ramp-up drag on service quality and output
- A balance between compliance, quality and cost — the client needed consistently high compliance and quality standards, but without this coming at the expense of commercial and cost efficiency
The solution
Huntswood took a fully assured approach to the engagement through Rubraik, combining recruitment capability, operational design expertise and ongoing process optimization to meet the brief on both speed and quality:
- Rapid, large-scale deployment — recruited and deployed a skilled team of 478 full-time equivalents (FTEs) within just six weeks, significantly reducing the time it typically takes to reach full BAU productivity
- Fit-for-purpose operational design — worked closely with the client to review and refine processes, procedures and tooling, ensuring the operating model was built around what the business needed rather than a generic template
- A focus on performance excellence — backed the team with structured training and quality assurance through Rubraik Achieve, enabling agents to reach a market-leading average of 4 successfully resolved cases per agent per day
- A balanced commercial model — introduced a pricing structure designed to hold cost efficiency and high service standards together, rather than trading one off against the other
The results
The partnership delivered strong, sustained performance across quality, compliance and customer satisfaction metrics:- 96.5% quality scores, exceeding the client's own quality benchmarks and reflecting consistently high compliance standards across the operation
- FOS escalations kept to just 1.2%, a strong indicator of effective, fair first-time complaint resolution and reduced downstream regulatory risk
- CSAT score of 4.1, surpassing the contractual SLA of 4.0 and sustained over a five-year partnership — evidence of consistent, not one-off, performance
- Marked improvement in speed to competence and overall productivity, supporting the client's ability to scale service delivery without compromising standards
Sustained over five years, the partnership demonstrates how rapid, well-designed deployment combined with disciplined quality assurance can deliver both regulatory confidence and strong customer outcomes at scale.
