UK sole traders and small business owners can now create an indicative insurance quote without ever leaving ChatGPT after digital broker Simply Business became the first in the UK to integrate its pricing engine directly into OpenAI’s chatbot.
The London-based insurer, which has more than one million customers in the United Kingdom and United States, has activated a dedicated app in ChatGPT’s app directory. A parallel launch was launched in the US market on the same day.
For the UK’s estimated 5.5 million small businesses, it’s all about speed. Users are asked for just four details: their business, annual turnover, years trading and UK postcode – and the app returns a guide price in seconds. Those wishing to proceed will be redirected to the Simply Business website to complete underwriting and purchase a policy in the traditional manner.
The company says the integration has been built with the privacy, security and reliability safeguards expected by brokers. This point is likely to be important to regulators observing the rapid penetration of generative AI into regulated financial services.
The move is the latest building block in a global technology strategy that is gaining momentum at Simply Business. In October last year, the company launched a hyper-personalized AI advisor in the US, designed to eliminate friction in the purchase process, which has long been a source of frustration for time-poor entrepreneurs.
CEO David Summers said the launch was a natural extension of the company’s founding ambitions. “In 2005, we set out to change the way small businesses buy insurance,” he said. “More than two decades later, we have over a million customers worldwide and we continue to develop our capabilities to simplify the way they search for and buy insurance. The launch of this UK and US insurance app for small businesses in ChatGPT is our latest step to meet our customers where they are and make the insurance buying process easier, better and fairer for them.”
Dana Edwards, the group’s chief technology officer, argued that the broker was simply following its customers. “Small business owners are already using platforms like ChatGPT to research, plan and make decisions,” she said. “By safely integrating insurance pricing into this environment, we remove another barrier between them and the coverage they need. We built the app with the security measures customers have come to expect. This type of rapid, responsible innovation is exactly what our global technology platform is designed for.”
The launch underlines a wider shift in the way UK SMEs should do business with financial services providers. As conversational AI becomes the go-to source for research on everything from taxes to HR, insurers, accountants and lenders are under increasing pressure to meet customers on these platforms rather than waiting for them to arrive on a branded website.
The Simply Business app appears as a recommendation when ChatGPT users ask questions about business risks and insurance coverage, or can be accessed directly from the app directory.
