By Helen Richardson, insurance senior product manager, U.K. and Ireland, LexisNexis Risk Solutions
Typically, customer information within insurance firms is stored separately across multiple business lines such as motor, home, health and pet, with little ability to link records and create a cohesive customer view. The result is a fragmented understanding of risk and protection needs.
A single customer view (SCV) brings those fragments together, enabling insurance providers to understand each customer in context, as an individual with unique and evolving needs.
A unified view helps insurers act with greater precision and empathy
Seeing the full picture of a customer’s relationship with a brand, or group of brands, allows insurance providers to make fairer, more accurate decisions about cover and pricing. A joined-up record also means, as a best practice, customers don’t have to repeat their details or reverify their identity across multiple lines of business.
Building inclusion through insight
A key enabler of the single customer view is the ability to reliably link and match data across the organisation — and this is where customer identity resolution solutions such as LexID® for Insurance can play a crucial role. By bringing and ultimately resolving multiple records into a single, accurate customer identity, LexID can help insurance providers build a comprehensive and current understanding of each individual. This richer perspective supports deeper personalisation, more tailored product design and, ultimately, better customer outcomes.
Crucially, a connected view of customers also strengthens how insurance providers identify and support vulnerable customers. Vulnerability can stem from four main drivers — poor health, low capability, reduced resilience or negative life events such as redundancy or relationship breakdowns. When indicators emerge in one part of the business, they should inform interactions everywhere.
When customer data becomes linked across sales, underwriting and claims, teams no longer need to rely on fragmented or inconsistent records. Instead, every function sees the same customer reality and can adapt communication and decision-making appropriately.
By unifying identity intelligence across the value chain, insurance providers avoid siloed views, reduce repeated questioning, and can help ensure that vulnerable customers receive fair, empathetic and consistent treatment at every touchpoint. A truly operationalised SCV is one that supports both inclusion and Consumer Duty compliance.
Equally, when vulnerability indicators or life-event triggers are integrated into the insight, insurance providers can adapt communication and claims processes in ways that protect customers during moments of stress or change.
The result is both commercial sustainability and social value: inclusion through understanding.
Technology and trust go hand in hand
Creating a single customer view requires careful and responsible stewardship of data. Consent, accuracy, and transparency are central. Insurance providers need trusted partners who can unify and enrich data responsibly — bringing together policy, public, and behavioural insights within a compliant, ethical framework.
At LexisNexis Risk Solutions, we help insurers do exactly that: turning fragmented datasets into actionable intelligence that strengthens customer understanding and outcomes. With data-linked insights available at quote, renewal and claim, insurance providers can deliver fairer pricing, smoother journeys, and stronger retention — all while meeting regulatory expectations around fairness and vulnerability.
Consumer Duty pressures make the Single Customer View essential
A further key benefit of customer identity resolution, and its ability to enable a single customer view, is how it supports Consumer Duty reporting. The Chartered Insurance Institute’s latest Consumer Duty report highlights the continued difficulty firms face to produce high-quality Board reports. Knowing what data to include, accessing appropriate data, integrating datasets effectively, and demonstrating relationships across them were among the most significant barriers identified[ii].
These challenges align directly to the capabilities a single customer view can deliver, including:
• Detailed segmented analysis, especially for vulnerable customers — reducing blind spots and helping firms evidence fair outcomes.
• Connecting data across teams to challenge assumptions and drive change — replacing manual processes with insight-ready intelligence.
• Improved data quality — a core FCA expectation, supported by consistently linked, verified customer information.
• Better visibility of customer segments and vulnerability characteristics — enabling firms to identify and support vulnerable customers.
The FCA’s own Consumer Duty findings reinforce this direction of travel[iii]. Good practice examples emphasised high-quality MI and meaningful analysis of different customer types, including those with vulnerability characteristics. However, areas for improvement centred on data quality, insufficient segmentation and a lack of evidence showing firms fully understood differential customer outcomes.
A single view of customers can directly address these concerns. Whether detecting early signs of financial vulnerability, understanding affordability pressures behind motor premium sensitivity, or strengthening fraud prevention through identity-linked insight, SCV provides the analytical foundation the Consumer Duty demands.
A connected future for inclusive protection
The Financial Inclusion Committee’s strategy sets a clear challenge: build protection that reflects real lives. The solution lies in seeing customers clearly — across products, life stages, and risk profiles.
By embracing the single customer view — supported by enriched, connected data that meets both customer needs and regulatory expectations, insurance providers can bridge the protection gap, personalise experiences and help ensure that the promise of insurance — security, fairness, and peace of mind — reaches everyone.
[i] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/financial-inclusion-strategy/financial-inclusion-strategy#financial-resilience-through-insurance-1
[ii] https://www.knowhow.cii.co.uk/news/2025/new-cii-report-highlights-key-challenges-in-consumer-duty-board-reporting/#:~:text=Findings%20were%20drawn%20from%20a,submitted%20their%20first%20mandatory%20reports.
[iii] https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/good-and-poor-practice/consumer-support-outcome-good-practices-areas-improvement#revisions
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