Leadership Insights: Michelle Taylor reflects on 2025 and the priorities shaping 2026

Mark Colegate: On Leadership Insights I'm joined by Michelle Taylor she is Broker Distribution Director at Aviva. Michelle before we start looking at 2026, 2025, what would you say have been the key achievements of the team?

Michelle Taylor: 2025 I think has been a fantastic success for us, particularly the feedback we've had from our brokers so our broker sentiment has really, really shifted this year, which we're delighted about. So a lot of our brokers you know we'll send out our own surveys to our brokers but particularly our strategic partners have surveyed us which is part of our relationship with them and we've come out number one in over 50% of our broker relationships there which we're absolutely delighted about. We've come out one or two in about 78% of our relationships this year and I think it's 80% in our top quartile so all of our strategic relationships we've come out in the top quartile, which we're absolutely delighted to have achieved in 2025 so the challenge is how do we better that for 2026. And we've done that through a number of things but mainly our service proposition where we've really, really moved the dial in terms of how we show up for our customers and our brokers. Obviously, the highlight of that was then we were also recognised as General Insurer of the Year in 2025 by Insurance Times and by British Insurance Awards and and some of those are really really important to us because they're voted for by our brokers so that's fantastic.

Mark Colegate: We talked a little bit about the service standard. How much is it that service has improved how much is it more people know about what you do and are now prepared to ask for?

Michelle Taylor: Yeah I think that's probably a fair question for us. We've put some real key developments into our service proposition this year. So we've put a new portal into our team so a lot of it's about visibility so again are we telling people actually what we're really really good at but we've got some really key proof points in terms of that so now we can see 90% of our quotes we can log within 30 minutes and what's really great is brokers can actually go on to our portal and see where their quote is in terms of our machine that is Aviva so whether or not it's on underwriter's desk whether or not it's being referred whatever it is we can see that there's visibility of that so for us to have got to respond back and say we've got your quote within 30 minutes is a huge shift for that.

Mark Colegate: Looking into this year and ahead what would you say are the main challenges that brokers are facing, I mean you must be out there talking to them all day every day and and that you're facing?

Michelle Taylor: 2025 was was difficult in terms of market conditions. I'd like to say that I hope that's different in 2026 but we'll soon find out won't we as we start the year for us. But the biggest challenge will be the market conditions you know we know that puts a lot of pressure under our brokers so for us we think about what can we do from a customer perspective to help the broker in terms of keeping and retaining that customer. So we've done a lot of work around underinsurance this year, in our digital platform this year we've as standard we've now introduced business interruption as standard for 24 months, which is a key thing I think underinsurance is a big topic for customers and we felt like we had to make a proactive step on that so that's something we're really, really proud of and one of the areas we're really, really looking to address. Brokers always talk to us about how do they retain and attract talent to their businesses so it's been a real key focus for us for a number of years actually at Aviva so for a number of years we've done Future Leaders Program, which is about getting some of the brokers board ready so a big part of their business has been succession and how do they keep people, how do they develop them. So that's been a program we've done I think we're in our eighth cohort for that but last year we introduced our Rising Stars Program we're just about to launch this year's as well and that's a really key one for me in particular I'm really passionate about developing not only our own people but how can we help brokers develop their own talent so we introduced a Rising Stars Program, which is just for people that have just got that something special about them so how can we get them to their next level in terms of their career, how we can really help them in terms of coaching, presentation skills, gravitas, we do a whole section on gravitas which is fantastic and we get some external people coming and talk to them so that's a program, it's a years program that they go on for that and we're about to enter the second year of that for Rising Stars and I'm hugely proud of that because I sponsor that program.

Mark Colegate: What sort of capacity have you got to provide this training to up-and-coming brokers because it can't be infinite?

Michelle Taylor: So we don't have endless resources for this but we have an amazing team of trainers we do a number, because we also do technical training as well actually, but we've got a couple of trainers that are fantastic so no we haven't got endless amounts of resource on this but we're really focused in the key areas that we think is important to brokers.

Mark Colegate: Well you've talked about the market backdrop but when you sit down with your team what are the key deliverables that you all want to be judged on this year?

Michelle Taylor: In distribution in particular I think it's about visibility alright for us we need to be out there talking to our brokers and listening. So we've opened a number of extra offices last year so we opened Cardiff last year so we've now got 15 trading locations but our distribution team are all across the UK. We also have a telephone account management team as well that are on the phones for some of our newer relationships that we're trying to develop so visibility is really really key for us to make sure that we're in regularly seeing our brokers and we really monitor that and track that to make sure that we're getting really, really good coverage, so that's a really key challenge for us that we need to make sure that we're in there talking to our brokers particularly around their renewals, what problems they've got sitting on their desk because if you're not in there then you then you don't know for sure. And off the back of that this year, we've got a series of broker roadshows that we're starting first week in February so we're going out to a number of locations across the UK where we're going to have some of our senior team out talking to brokers just really to try and listen these are things that are on our agenda is there anything that we're missing, is there anything else you need from us to help them through next year. We've also got a fantastic propositions team that I'm now responsible for as well so we'll always look at actually as a proposition for our key broker segments is that doing what we want it to do and is it enough for them, so we'll be talking to them a bit more there's a few things we've got on the cards for this year around propositions that we really, really want to hone in on in 2026.

Mark Colegate: Do you miss the selling side of things if you must be spending quite a lot of time on relationship management and leading a team?

Michelle Taylor: Every day is selling to me. Every conversation is an opportunity to listen to a broker and see how I can help them so yeah I still have to keep my hands dirty in terms of having conversations with brokers. I get to see most of my brokers throughout the year as well so yeah never never stop selling or never stop listening I suppose I'd rather say.

Mark Colegate: So if you had to condense all of this down, what would your message be to brokers?

Michelle Taylor: It might sound a little bit simple, but for me, the key message for brokers is look we're here for you and your customers, come and talk to us, the market conditions are really really challenging, tell us what you need from us and we absolutely want to be there to help.

Mark Colegate: Michelle Taylor, thank you.

Michelle Taylor: Thank you.