The changes would be designed to improve the customer in-life journey through offering increased digitisation of key services, said CEO Paul Burgess, and follow the launch of the company’s previously-announced Insight dealer data suite at the end of Q1.

He explained: “As a business, we’ve always been keen to invest in IT but the pandemic has really added impetus to our programme of digitisation. There is simply much increased demand for the ability to access both new and existing services online.

“Over the last year, we have been making changes that have been designed to help dealers and other introducers to maximise their business opportunities during the various lockdowns. This seemed a priority to us and has been successful.

“We’re now pretty happy with the shape of that side of the business and are turning our attention to the customer in-life journey, making it as simple as possible to access the services that people with existing agreements need.

“The aim is to enable them to get the information they want as quickly as possible online and then allow them to easily take whatever actions they need. For us, these are key differentiators in the current market.”

Paul explained that Startline was spending more and more of its time on the ongoing management of its digitised services in the wake of the pandemic.

“What we have been learning during the last year, and this is something that seems to be especially true during the current crisis, is that the ongoing management of the digitisation you adopt is as important as the core technology itself.

“For example, we’re putting huge effort at the moment into making our speed of approval ever faster. Any improvement we can make, even if it is measured in seconds, will have a positive impact on the customer journey.

“For us, it is all about treating IT as not just a long-term, major project but paying attention to real-world systems and processes that are used on a day-to-day basis, and spotting where positive changes can be made. This has definite business value.”