When the founding members of MiWay sat down to plan and strategise, we realised the importance of offering clients something different. We also realised being different is not good enough; we needed to offer something that is different and better – better value, better service, or better price (lower premiums in insurance terms). A new company that simply offered the same as all the existing ones would have had a very small prospect of success, for the simple reason that it would not have offered consumers a compelling reason to move from their existing service providers.

The essence of business strategy, according to the gurus, is differentiation, as explained above.

The vision for MiWay is to establish a one-stop-shop financial services company, one that offers a wide range of financial services products under one brand. We decided to start with short-term insurance, but the medium to long term plan includes life insurance, investment products, loans, debit/credit cards, asset finance, etc. So, despite our current focus on car insurance, MiWay will eventually offer a lot more.

The challenge that faced us was to find meaningful differentiators in an already competitive short-term insurance industry. This was by no means an easy task. It is easier said than done. However, by listening to the typical gripes of consumers and finding solutions to it, we managed to bring a number of exciting differentiators to market. A number of these differentiators are also quite innovative in their own right. This provided the founding team with a great deal of satisfaction.

The list of differentiators includes the following:

1. A comments forum, where clients are invited to post compliments or complaints on our website.
2. A rewards programme (MiRewards) that is based on client loyalty and not on luck.
3. A portal (MiXpress) that enables online purchasing of products, as well as self service online administration of policies.
4. A motor insurance product (MiDriveStyle) that rates clients according to their own specific driver behaviour.
5. A values-based culture based on four unique core values.

In addition to the above, there are a number of differentiators planned for the future, when we roll out the rest of the financial services products. Differentiation and innovation have become part of the way we look at things, a way of life. In fact, our brand is being built around the concept of ‘coherent logic’, or ‘intelligent by design’. The customer must be able to say MiWay’s services are ‘designed for me’. This, of course, is a journey, not a destination. It implies a certain mindset towards everything we do. It also implies we will forever be in a state of continuous improvement. We will forever be asking ‘how can we do things smarter’?

I plan to place a series of discussions of these differentiators on my blog over the next number of weeks. I would appreciate feedback, comments, debate.

Kind regards,