The COVID-19 pandemic has brought home how much people value the human touch, in our business relationships with colleagues and clients almost as much as with family and friends. And this is as true in the premium finance industry as it is anywhere. It's always been a people business, but with anxiety and uncertainty all around, face-to-face meetings an impossibility and spikes in call volumes it's become more important than ever to provide a human connection between companies, brokers, and end users. Never has good communication and customer service been so valued. During this time the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation across the insurance industry. Paradoxically it is technology can meet some of the challenges of providing a human connection, at scale.

Managing director of Close Brothers Premium Finance, Seán Kemple, outlines the history of the provider. We are now in the information age, where computers, data and AI are rapidly taking over from industrialisation as the driving force of progress. To illustrate the power of information in our lives, Google gets over 3.5bn searches each day. WhatsApp users exchange 65bn messages daily. These are staggering figures, and underline how change is seemingly slow, but once a tipping point is reached, it accelerates very quickly indeed.