AI, feedback and future-proofing our personal lines next-gen broker model

Mark Colegate: Jonathan Santer is Managing Director of Broker and Partnerships at Aviva. He joins me now. Jonathan, when we caught up at the end of 2024, you were telling me that you're putting a lot of focus into the regional broking space. So how's that been going?

Jonathan Santer: That's right, Mark. So I'm pleased to say we're making fantastic inroads into the regional broking space. And that's really been borne out by a lot of listening to broker feedback and continuing to respond to that and iteratively creeping out our proposition to accommodate more. So we are often challenged around what is our commitment to the Broker personal lines space? And that's understandable when you see some of our peers have fallen away, but also with a particular, I constantly get cited about potential distractions with other sorts of activity within the business. And I think what we've demonstrated is that's absolutely not the case. We've got a ring fence team with committed resources and we're doubling down our efforts still on what we see as a really important and significant channel going forwards. And I'm pleased to say that's been borne out in the numbers as well. So I was public at the beginning of this year around wanting to double the size of our book in the regional space. And I'm really pleased to say that we are more than on track to deliver against that and doing so in a sustainable way as well, which is really important in terms of how we want to show up going forwards.

Mark Colegate: And when we last spoke, there were a handful of key things that you said you wanted to deliver on. So remind me, what were they and have you done it?

Jonathan Santer: So there are a number of elements to this, but broadly it boiled down to opening up our underwriting footprint and then looking at how we support our brokers more. So on the former with the underwriting footprint across all of our products, again, a lot of these are just compounding lots of small changes, but it might be things like accommodating garages off the main site of the house on a home policy or vehicle modifications, you know, slightly more complex or a higher number of vehicle modifications, or things like opening up quotability for flood across different software houses. We've also opened up IHP across all of our core products now, including now SSP home, which was the final one to go live. So across our entire suite, we've been continually looking to bring the broadest underwriting footprint and the most sophisticated rates to market. So that keeps on progressing. The second element is with respect to our service. So this was around making it easier for our brokers to place business with us. So that's supporting with much more relevant and updated collateral, both our documentation, but also, for example, just our broker portal and website and our claims portal too, where we're serving up much more rich and timely data to allow our brokers to keep their customers updated about the status of their claim as they go along. Risk management advice - calling out potential under insurance at point of quote as well, again, helping protect our customers, but also brokers with that prompt where our models might have identified that potential under insurance. So lots and lots and lots going on in that underwriting footprint and that service base as well, which we're going to continue to evolve and develop going forwards.

Mark Colegate: There's lots going on in the last 12 months, but what can brokers expect to see from Aviva in the personal lines space in the next 12 months?

Jonathan Santer: Well, as you can imagine, we're not resting on our laurels. We're still absolutely committed and wanting to invest further in this really important channel to Aviva. And again, it's a continuation of the same theme. So we're continuing to open up our underwriting footprint. So we'll be opening up for SD&P cover on Van, for example, looking at accommodating higher value vehicles on our standard products. We're also doing a lot of investigation work to explore potentially opening up into new underwriting segments as well, and depending on the outcome of that as well, hopefully it's another string to our bow, recognizing the fact that a number of regional brokers will have customers approaching them with specific needs. So we need to be more than just accommodating the mass market profile of customers. So lots to go at there. And then the other elements as well that will continue to develop is our service proposition. So we already, for example, now offer callbacks to customers through the live chat medium, when, oh, sorry, our brokers, when they contact us on request. If they've got something a little bit more challenging or something a bit more unusual that they need to actually speak to someone to unpick rather than go through a live chat journey, that's now available. We'll develop that out and we're trialing additional use of telephony. And we're also looking to bring in virtual assistant technology too, to help field some of the lower sort of complexity queries upfront, thereby releasing both our brokers and our own agents and underwriters' time to really focus on the more complicated ones where that additional level of value is wanted.

Mark Colegate: And finally, any key messages for brokers on how they can further help and ensure a partnership?

Jonathan Santer: A couple here. So first and foremost, keep talking to us because whilst we try and innovate ourselves, all of the best ideas come from outside in. And really, if we're thinking about how we need to stand up and be responsive to our customers and brokers alike, it all comes from you. So keep talking to us. Likewise, keep trying us out. We've developed a lot of additional capability. And whilst we've tried to promote it as bad as possible, not all of it is fully utilized to its maximum extent. And we really like to think actually there are solutions there for brokers who might be struggling to place business at the moment that they might not be aware of. So continue to try us out. And just a pet one of mine, and that's in regards to claims notification, you can really, really help us, and in fact, insurers more generally within the broker space by getting early notification with third party contact details captured, and also helping to steer, if possible, into our own in-house network for repair and the like. And this is meaningful for us between the sort of happy path and the worst case scenario. There's over £10,000 worth of cost to us, depending on which route that claims goes down to on average. And that is always just reinvested straight back into the rates and therefore enables us to be more competitive and collectively to write more business. At the moment, there's quite a differentiation between what we see through direct channels and broker channels in terms of that notification journey. By narrowing that, we should also help to be a lot more competitive in this space. So that's one final plea. So keep continuing to work with us and keep giving us the feedback - we really value that partnership and support for it, and we're committed to being with our partners for the long term.

Mark Colegate: Jonathan Santer, thank you.

Jonathan Santer: Thank you.