Zurich's UK has launched the Innovation Foundry, designed to fast-track its take-up of new products and services to tackle ever changing customer demands as well as embed what it describes as a "clear culture of innovation" throughout its business.

Building on a central principle of global Zurich's strategy, the company has committed to work with customers while considering their behaviours and needs.

Recent examples of this approach in the UK include a partnership with Laka, a disruptive bike insurance product, and the launch of FaceQuote, a selfie tool helping people understand what life cover would cost.

Zurich has also teamed up with EasyJet to offer insurance pricing models intuitively aligned to the specific requirement of each customer.

Depending on the genesis of an idea or proposition, the Innovation Foundry aims to seek long-term partnerships rather than focus on M&A activity.

The innovation process has been created with support from Ninety Consulting, specialists in insurance innovation and long-term partners of Zurich. The new team will be led by Mark Budd, UK head of innovation.

He explained: "We have launched the UK Innovation Foundry to build on a central principle of Zurich's global strategy – that innovation and fostering an innovative culture should be a permanent fixture for all organisations that want to stay relevant.

"If we are going to think and work differently, we need to focus our efforts in the right places and the Innovation Foundry will take ideas from an initial 'spark', test them for value at every stage and move to a full scale roll-out for the right ideas.

"Building on our experience and achievements over the past year, we aim to work this in to the very fabric of our business. No idea will be considered wrong, however, if something doesn't work we want to fail fast and move on to the next thing."