New-business capture ran on paper and PDFs across 180+ mobile managers, creating incomplete data and heavy manual processing
Flexed development and UX capability into FMG's team to build FMG Link, an automated, offline-capable digital capture process
Roughly doubled back-office processing efficiency; complete, validated data replacing paper
Industry
FMG insures more of rural New Zealand than anyone else. Around 180 rural and commercial managers work in the field, driving out to farms and businesses to write and renew cover in person. That face-to-face presence is FMG's point of difference, and it matters most with the larger rural and commercial clients whose cover is complex and whose premiums are significant. The model is a genuine strength. The way it captured information was holding it back.
New business was captured on paper and editable PDFs. Across a workforce spread the length of the country, that meant every manager did it a little differently, submissions arrived incomplete, and there was no practical way to enforce a single compliant process in the field. Each form then went to a processing team in Christchurch to be re-keyed by hand into FMG's core systems. When something was missing, which was not uncommon, the processing team had to go back to the manager, who had to go back to the client. Every gap started another loop, and every loop cost days.
That is what FMG set out to solve: modernise how new business is captured, automate the path from a client conversation into the core systems, and improve the consistency of the data along the way. It was a modernisation and process-automation problem before it was a technology one.
FMG is a digitally mature organisation with a clear and ambitious programme of work. Its constraint was never vision. It was capacity, and the shape of that capacity over time.
Demand for delivery does not arrive at a constant rate. It peaks and troughs, and the peaks call for different capabilities at different moments: web one quarter, data the next, UX or business analysis the one after. Sizing a permanent team to the peaks would mean carrying expensive, specialised people through the troughs when the work is not there. So FMG made a deliberate choice. It keeps a lean permanent core and flexes specialist partner capability across the peaks, drawing in the right skills for the work in front of it and releasing them when the peak passes. That also lets FMG fund variable delivery through its programme budget rather than permanently growing headcount, with each block of work tied to value agreed in the quarterly plan.
Nodero is the partner that model runs on. For more than four years, Nodero has flexed development, UX, and business analysis capability into FMG's teams, working as part of those teams rather than at arm's length. The value is not simply extra hands. It is the right mix of capability at the right time, and people who raise the standard of the work while it is being done.
FMG Link is the digital workflow that replaced the paper. Nodero's developers and a UX designer built it together with FMG's internal team.
The hard part was making it work where the work happens. A rural manager captures detailed, complex insurance information in conditions that do not cooperate: rural properties, patchy or absent mobile coverage, and conversations that stop and restart, sometimes across two days. Link was built to work offline, holding everything on the device and syncing back to FMG's core systems once the rural manager returns to coverage. It enforces the rules as information is entered, so a submission cannot be sent until it is complete and meets FMG's policy logic. What reaches Christchurch is legible, complete, and validated every time.
Getting people in the field to use it was its own problem, and this is where the UX work earned its place. The information these managers handle is dense. There are many questions, several possible pathways through a policy depending on what the client needs, and details that recur across different documents and systems. It can be slow and error-prone to work through at a kitchen table or in a paddock. Nodero's UX designer imposed order on it, structuring the flow so managers are guided along the right path without hunting for information or entering the same thing twice. This was not about a better-looking form. It produced a process people can follow quickly and correctly in the field, and that clarity is a large part of why capture is now consistent and complete, and why a workforce used to paper took to it.
Nodero also contributed to FMG's delivery standards, bringing an outside perspective within a balanced team of experienced leads and developing talent. Beyond Link, Nodero has supported FMG Connect, the client-facing claims portal, improving an existing system on FMG's Guidewire platform rather than building new. FMG can draw on a range of capability from one trusted partner as its programme demands.
The clearest measure is in processing. The Christchurch team once spent its days deciphering handwriting, chasing missing details, and re-keying everything by hand. It now receives complete, validated submissions. Despite the volume of submissions doubling, the processing efficiency has also roughly doubled. Submissions that used to bounce back and forth for days now clear inside the 24-hour service level, often the same day. Link is now the mandatory method for new-business capture across FMG's 180+ rural and commercial managers, ensuring every submission follows a consistent, validated process.
In the field, digital capture is now mandatory for all 180-plus managers, and for the first time the data entering FMG's systems is consistent and complete, because the process will not let it be otherwise. The change met real resistance at first, from a workforce used to paper. That has reversed. Managers who pushed back hardest now say they would not go back. In its first 15 months, Link has carried more than 5,000 new-business submissions, and it is now the foundation for how FMG's field force works and for the next phase of the programme.
"Could not have done this without every single person you put on the team.”
John Cao - Head of Product - Client Servicing, FMG
