~214 hours a week. ~5.7 FTE. ~£223k a year.
Every week without this is roughly 214 handler-hours of routine work done by hand, ~£4.3k of loaded labour on work a machine should do, and a compliance file you’re reconstructing after the fact instead of generating in real time. Here’s the model. Put your own numbers in it.
Recover capacity you can’t recruit.
Defaults sit on our demo broker. Change the five inputs to your firm and the numbers move live.
Model per North Stack’s ROI methodology: hours/week = handlers × 40 × admin%; FTE = hours ÷ effective hours; labour = hours × rate × 52.2; rework saved = volume × 52.2 × error% × addressable-share × £45. Figures are a defensible estimate, not a guarantee.
Three forces converge on the same desk.
You can’t hire out of it
UK insurance hiring fell ~10 points below its 2019 baseline by 2025 and 48% of brokers report acute claims and handling shortages. The backlog isn’t a staffing gap you can fill. The people aren’t there.
Consolidation loads volume, not capacity
Firms shrink in number while books get absorbed; over half of 2025’s broker deals involved targets under 10 staff. Someone has to process the acquired book with the same team.
The FCA now expects evidence
Post the March 2025 operational-resilience deadline, the onus is on the firm to demonstrate good outcomes with an immutable audit trail, generated in real time rather than reconstructed under pressure.