Continued investment into our service for digital trading

Following another strong year in digital, we caught up with Kat Halbert, Head of Digital Operations, on her reflections from 2023 and what's in the pipeline for this year.

2023 reflections

“2023 was another strong year for our digital trading proposition overall, however I’m incredibly proud of the service levels our people were able to deliver. Even though we had another year of double-digit growth we’ve made sure that our high service levels for digital trading have remained the same.

That’s not to say everything is always perfect – we’ve had some service challenges along the way as a result of the significant growth and the increase in demand that brings.  However, when this has happened, we’ve acted quickly to get things back on track.

Investment in our people

We’ve created a robust recruitment and capability plan which has meant that we’ve continued to futureproof roles and train up our existing people in advance of when we need them. We introduced this approach a couple of years back and you told us it made a massive difference, so we've committed to keep this investment going.

We know that speed of response is important. Last year we recruited an additional 40 underwriters and we're just embarking on phase 2 of recruitment for our 2024 plan to make sure our service keeps ahead of our growth plans. To improve access to decision makers, we supported 86% of our underwriters to achieve a license increase, giving them the ability to write higher levels of business and deal with more complex risks. This investment into our people has meant that we’ve been driving speedier response times and a more consistent quality of response.

We also have dedicated teams to deal with different classes of insurance, from motor and non-motor to trading platforms and specialty lines. For our most complex digital product, Commercial Combined, we've aligned a specific set of our most experienced underwriters who are skilled in helping you place business online. This has meant that even when continuing to expand our businesses, we still maintain our service capability.

Looking forward

I understand that a strong service offering is critical to a successful Digital operation, which is why we’re going to continue to develop and grow our digital trading underwriter teams. For me, I think it’s all about consistency, which is why we will continue to:

• Be there for our brokers when they need us through accessible underwriters, quick response times and ease of trading.
• Develop our Digital platforms to increase efficiency and ensure our resource is focused on value-add activities.
• Commit ongoing investment in our people to ensure we drive great customer outcomes.”

Innovation and change

We’re incredibly proud to have been rated 5-star for our eTrading service support*, but in order to retain this we know we need to keep our focus.

Rest assured that from an innovation and change perspective we will be continuing to innovate our customer journeys to broaden the scope of our digital proposition, fixing the things that you’re telling us you don’t like and delivering the change that makes it easier for you to trade digitally with us.”

 

_{*Aviva rated five stars for Fast Trade and service via software house in the 2023 Insurance Times eTrading Report.}