BizCover COVID-19 SME Impact Index – May

Our Chief Financial Officer, Simon Schwarz, takes you through the weekly updates for the month of May on how BizCover is tracking through the COVID-19 economic crisis in Australia.

01 June 2020

What a difference a week makes! New business sales have caught up with new business submissions, which are also continuing to increase to record pre-COVID levels at nearly 20% above baseline.

The cancellation rate has stabilised over the last week at 20% better (lower) than baseline levels, which should also assist in improving our overall customer retention as we move beyond the crisis into growth again.

25 May 2020

The index charts are continuing to improve as activity levels return to normal.

The cancellation rate continues to fall, and is now amazingly more than 20% below baseline February levels, which together with the steady renewal rate is fantastic for our ongoing customer retention. New Business sales are continuing to increase in line with New Business submissions (enquiries), and are now only 10% below baseline February levels and 25% below where it would usually have been in May.

18 May 2020

Good news on the charts again this week. The cancellation rate continues to reduce, and is now back to or below baseline (February) levels which is great to see! New Business Submissions continue to increase to baseline (February) levels, and New Business Sales have increased to only 15% below baseline levels over the last week with our sales agents back to 5 days a week. The renewal rate is also staying steady at about 5% below baseline levels.

We are hoping that conditions continue to improve back to baseline (February) levels across all of these metrics, and from there starts to improve back to where we should be in June and beyond!

11 May 2020

The charts are continuing to improve. Cancellation rate and New Business submissions are almost back to base levels, and the renewal rate is holding steady, gradually moving closer to base levels. However a key driver of our revenue, New Business sales, seems to be staying steady at 80% of base levels for the last few weeks, lagging the increase in New Business submission levels.

4 May 2020

More good news this week on the charts. Cancellation rate continues to decline towards more normal levels, now at only 20% above usual. New Business submission volumes continue to increase almost back to normal, with New Business sales level slower to follow. Don’t worry too much about the renewal rate which appears to have dropped in the last week – that is due to a change in renewal process over month end for the next few months while we experiment with taking renewals closer to the renewal date in response to customer feedback.