Helping a 130+ year old insurance business to get closer to its customers
Founded in 1887 to protect Anglican churches, Ecclesiastical is not your typical finance group.
For starters many of the risks they insure are highly specialist: form Stonehenge to St Paul’s Cathedral; several Historic Royal Palaces to thousands of small charities.
When it comes to Ecclesiastical’s impact, they do a lot more than simply claim to be purpose-led: 100% of their profits go to their charitable owners, making Ecclesiastical the fourth biggest corporate giver in the UK.
Despite the huge contributions they make, Ecclesiastical’s brand awareness is not necessarily that high outside of specialist insurance markets. One of the many projects I’ve collaborated with them on is helping to name and launch the ‘Movement for Good’ awards, in which they grant £1,000,000 a year directly to charities – bolstering both the recipients, and Ecclesiastical’s brand.
The core focus of my 5+ year relationship with Ecclesiastical has been helping them get closer to their customers. In turn this helps drive insight, understanding and, ultimately, growth.
Back in 2017 I travelled up and down the UK interviewing Ecclesiastical’s network of insurance brokers, school bursars, charity trustees, and estate managers. The output of this exercise was a brand perception audit, described by a board member as “the most comprehensive research we’ve ever undertaken”.
The report led to a number of structural and strategic changes in Ecclesiastical’s UK insurance business, as well as influencing their long-term brand strategy. An important recommendation was continuing to spend time with customers: tapping into their experience, expertise and the power of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing.
Ecclesiastical invited me to help implement this recommendation, working with their excellent Group Head of PR and Insights team to establish a series of sector specific ‘Advisory Panels’ covering charities, education and heritage organisations. In turn these panels fuel Ecclesiastical’s thought leadership activities, and future proposition development.
Today Ecclesiastical are continuing to grow their community, cultivate their expertise, and connect with their customers across a variety of touchpoints. An insurance group with a charitable purpose, they continue to evolve and impact people’s lives, all the time growing their brand and leading with purpose.
Long list of services:
- Market research
- Co-creation
- Customer closeness
- Advisory panels
- Brand strategy
- Communication strategy
- Stakeholder engagement
- Employee engagement
- Brand architecture