Claims service update and support over the festive period

RYAN BIRBECK: Hello and welcome to the second in a series of updates from leaders across the Aviva business about matters that are important to our brokers and customers. My name is Ryan Birbeck, Broker and Client Development Director, and I'm joined by Kelly Whittington. Commercial Lines Claims Director. Hi, Kelly.

KELLY WHITTINGTON: Hi there.

RYAN BIRBECK: So can you give us a flavour of your role and also some of the things that are on the minds of our brokers and customers at the moment?

KELLY WHITTINGTON: Sure. So, yeah, As you said, I'm the director of Commercial Claims at Aviva that's looking after our motor and our property teams where the main teams are across our teams in Perth and Norwich. And it's been a bit of busy time, actually, at the moment in claims. So, there's probably two things that we're hearing quite a lot that are on brokers minds. One would be around service, and the second would probably be about the cost of claims and the inflation that we're seeing. So I think if I think about the inflation side of things, there are some signs that things are starting to ease, but it's undoubtedly been causing some challenges for us. Since Covid and Brexit, we're now starting to see some of those costs levelling out in particular around things like material costs, and second hand car prices. But as we look forward into 2024 we are still concerned about the cost of labour and that increasing and going up further. So that's probably the thing that's on our mind the most.

RYAN BIRBECK: And you have touched on service there as well that is a topic that brokers talk to me about a lot. What's the current status of Aviva service delivery on claims?

KELLY WHITTINGTON: So I think it would be fair to say it's an improving picture, but we're not quite quite where we would want to be at this stage. We're probably making more progress in our non motor teams. Our motor teams have still continued to have some challenges. Things are improving and we continue to recruit. But it's difficult and I think even once we've then got people in, there will be a period time where it will take a little while for us to feel that those team members are fully competent. But we're certainly making good progress. We're investing heavily in making sure that we've got the right number of people.

I think the second thing that we're trying to do is that it has been a challenge to get hold of materials as we talked about earlier. But we do have our own wholly owned, motor repair network, which is our garage called Solus. And we're growing that capability, and we'll continue to do that into 2024 as well. Just last week we opened our latest garage, which is down in Newport and we've got another one opening in Sunderland in a few weeks time. And I think that's really important because that enables us to have access to repairers at a time when that can be really challenging to source at the moment. In addition to that in 2024 we will also be looking to build a dedicated commercial repair network, which is definitely something that from our brokers we've heard, is lacking at the moment. And so that's really exciting initiatives that we'll be sharing more of as things develop.

RYAN BIRBECK: Thanks, Kelly, brokers will be pleased that we've got a clear plan around service. What more can they expect from us in 2024?

KELLY WHITTINGTON: So I think we've made some really good progress in 2023 at the developments that we've made with our broker portal. And so at the end of this year we launched the ability for brokers to notify motor claims online and also property claims online during the first quarter of next year. That will see us developing that capability further and see us integrating into some of the larger software houses, and that's really gonna help drive efficiency for everybody, because that will enable push notifications to go back and forth between ours and our broker systems. So that's really exciting. And we've got a group of brokers who are helping shape that. So, looking forward to that launching and I think the second thing would just be about us  relaunching our Claims Service Manager proposition. And so we are going to then look to create a dedicated client service management team, along with a dedicated Broker Management team and hopefully that will us to continue getting the feedback so that we can act and improve where that's required, but also make sure that people are getting up to date information about the developments as they happen. So that's really exciting too.

RYAN BIRBECK: That's great. I agree with you that that change in the structure is going to really help us as we face into the market as one team in 2024.

That's all we've got time for today. This is the final Aviva update for this year. Thank you for all of your support. Everybody here at Aviva appreciates it, and you're going hear more from us in 2024.