Allianz benefits from an adaptive managed service that provides visibility and control of its recruitment agency expenditure and directly engaged contractors.

The customer

Allianz Insurance is one of the largest general insurers in the UK, providing insurance through brokers and partners.

Allianz Insurance employs over 4,200 people across a network of offices, offering commercial insurance with a full range of products for sole traders, right up to large commercial organisations as well as musical instrument insurance, legal protection and pet and equine insurance.

Background

Allianz Holdings, which owns the principal insurance operations of Allianz SE in Great Britain, initially sought to identify a payroll services provider to help it mitigate its employment / IR35 risks and implement an approach that could be consistently applied throughout all areas of its operations. The business also wanted to evaluate ways of gaining greater consistency and visibility of fees charged by its PSL and control of this area of expenditure.

Following a competitive tender process, Comensura was quickly identified as preferred bidder. We were then able to fully demonstrate the wider benefits of our vendor neutral adaptive managed service model, which has subsequently resulted in its full deployment across Allianz Insurance, LV= General Insurance and L&G General Insurance.

Our service

Comensura provides Allianz Insurance, LV= General Insurance and L&G General Insurance with an adaptive vendor neutral service, that manages the supply of contingent workers supplied through agencies and payrolls directly engaged contractors.

Our technology c.net, supports the standardisation of recruitment tasks and contractor on-boarding processes across the brands, providing a simple route to market for each brand.

The benefits

• Complete visibility and control of all contractor activity (directly engaged and agency supplied) and costs across three business entities.
• Effective management of IR35 / other employment risks.
• Single point of contact (online and offline) to source requirements: 100% fulfilment.
• 20% reduction in agency margin costs.
• Process efficiency, including electronic time-sheeting, consolidated invoicing per business entity and instant access to detailed management information.
• Dedicated support of our account management team.
• Through exerting control over the route to market and having a single standardised approach, previously hidden non-permanent headcount from consultancies and system integrators has been highlighted and addressed.

Feedback from the customer

"We really feel we have had an excellent experience and would recommend the services to anyone considering a managed service for contingent labour. We have been highly impressed by the
professionalism, support and expertise and customer care."

Sarah McKee, Allianz Insurance

Our solution

Implementation was carried out in three phases ‘Working across brands’ over a period of three months.

In phase one, our team onboarded all direct hire contractors in the space of a week prior to Christmas. The team additionally enrolled L&G General Insurance recruitment suppliers and ensured that assignments were created in our technology in time to start transacting for a 1st January go live.

Phase 2 for Allianz Insurance went live on February 3rd. This involved onboarding a further group of direct hires and a separate group of recruitment suppliers.

Implementation also involved providing advice and support for the planned IR35 reform to ensure compliance and determinations would be managed for their regulatory arrangements.

Phase 3 for LV= General Insurance went live on 23rd March while in lockdown and with the delay announced to the IR35 reforms!

Line managers across all three entities are now able to place orders for new employees on-line or via our team and manage their existing contingent workers via our technology c.net.

Each entity’s policies and governance requirements have been embedded in the system, to ensure full centralised visibility and control is in place, but without compromising line manager autonomy.

Their teams have direct access to a wide range of management information, and three detailed consolidated invoice files for each of the three distinct business entities.

Our account team provides full support for line managers, working closely with 33 specialist recruitment agencies to source highly skilled contractors for a variety of contingent contract requirements across categories such as IT, Project and Change Management, HR, Accounting and Finance and Actuarial.

We are also now in the process of further developing our adaptive managed service solution to encompass other business entities within the Allianz Group across the UK and internationally.