Leadership Insights: Chris Vine on regional expertise and digital improvements

Jenny: Chris Vine is Head of Regional Specialty at Aviva, and he joins me now, Chris, welcome to the studio.

Chris: Hello, thanks for having me.

Jenny: So first, Head of Regional Specialty. What exactly does this encompass and tell me a little bit about the team you lead?

Chris: Yeah, always a fun one the title Head of Regional Specialty. I think it means something different in every business you go to. So within Aviva and within my team, this is five lines of business. So that's Accident and Health or sometimes known as Group Personal Accident and Business Travel, Construction, Engineering, Renewable Energy, and Marine Cargo and Freight. So, I lead a team looking after those lines of business, which is 70 plus underwriters. We do from the very small to the very large and we've got people based all across the UK, all our broker partners outside of the London area. So that means we've got people in Perth, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, York, Norwich, Birmingham and Worthing. So, we have people, we have someone on the doorstep wherever the brokers are, because the key thing for us is we want to be trading locally and put experts right in front of you.

Jenny: So, looking back over the year so far, what would you say have been key deliverables, improvements, why were these implemented and how have they improved the broker experience with Aviva?

Chris: So, I think probably the first and foremost thing is this is a people business, and we continue to invest in our people. So, year to date, we've brought in 14 additional people into the team. Some of that was backfill for natural attrition, but most of it was actually about growth or filling roles where people have gone sideways and been promoted within Aviva. So, we've brought in experts within the field, and we've been able to develop people on through that. Because what is really important for us is having those local experts who are empowered to trade. The other area where we have, where there's been a big move for us in regional specialty this year has been within our digital team. So again, we've brought in extra people. As it grows, we've added extra headcounts, but we've also added two new specific roles. One on the dedicated pricing and actuary person and another performance management, which has meant that we've been able to review that book of business like we've never done before. Year to date, we've put in 90 plus changes. Now, some of them people won't have seen. There'll be little movements of, you know, something from this side of the screen to the other because it looks better or works better. Some will be big bang things. Hopefully, people will have, brokers will have seen that we've relaunched our Marine Freight product on both Fast Trade and on Acturis Etrade. But one of the bits that I'm, I'm proudest of is we've really challenged ourselves around referrals in the system. Hopefully our brokers will see a much slicker process where they can, can go through without touching the sides. But when it does refer or when they need help by taking that extra noise out, it means that the underwriters are there on the end of the phone.

Jenny: So looking at trends on an industry level, macroeconomic and regulatory, what sort of things are you seeing and how does this impact insurers, brokers and clients and if anything, what are you doing to mitigate them?

Chris: Yeah, so in, in the regional space, we're seeing more and more facilitisation of the lines of business that I look after. So I suppose when I look at my own portfolio, two thirds of the book has a premium under £10,000. So when you think of the time to deal with a relatively small policy and the cost to do that, I can understand how a lot of brokers are going, 'Well, actually, how can we trade this business as, as a block'? So what we've done to try and help in this area is we've added a dedicated person, dedicated resource into our DA hub or Delegated Authorities hub. And what this person will help do is, whether it's from the top end of full delegation, be that underwriting claims and you know, very specialist scheme that the broker will look after themselves to just a book roll, there is a whole world of admin and compliance around this stuff. And this person being dedicated will mean that we can, on-board them much quicker than we, we have done in the past. And also once they're on board, there'll be a much, much more robust process around managing them so that we can keep them running smoothly and profitably.

Jenny: So in terms of key deliverables, what can we expect looking forwards from Aviva in your department?

Chris: So what we've done is we've created 12 new roles. And what they will do is, by line of business and by region, they will be the point of contact for our brokers. So we've taken the day-to-day underwriting away from these people so that they can, focus on development and focus on that responsiveness and being there for the brokers. They will still have underwriting licences, so they are still technical and they will still be able to have a proper conversation. But they will also be freer to be able to be there to help the brokers and just give that simple one point of contact. Now, they might not deal with it. They might find you a home for it. And this is not me saying, you know, where you've got relationships within the team, I don't want you to go to them anymore. This is there as an addition, not us forcing brokers down a certain way. And the other thing we're also doing is we are looking to double the size of our construction team. What we have found is that in the large project construction space, so thinking £25 million plus contract values, we are seeing more of this business in the regional space. And brokers are often struggling to find a solution in the regional space and have been forced to come into the London market. What we have done is we've recruited a team of true construction experts who understand the complexities of this type of business. And they still have the backing of the expertise and our risk management team who are based out of London. But they're on the ground locally. So whether that is there to come and sit down with our brokers in their offices or whether that's going out and seeing the customers themselves, be that the contractor or the employer of the business. So, yeah, looking to double the size of that team, but the other piece is where we're in quite a novel position where the directorate that I sit within, we also have real estate and our latent defects team. So we're in a position where we can look at a customer and from the beginning of the project, all the way up to the operational phase all within one wider team, hopefully delivering something that can be a challenge in some other places.

Jenny: So finally, a call to action, your one main ask of brokers watching this interview today.

Chris: So I want Aviva Regional Specialty to be known for service, for responsiveness, and for being innovative, maybe what someone might expect of the new entrant. But we're not a new entrant. You also get the stability and the investment power that you get from a composite. So the ask really is me and my team have all signed up for this. If our brokers are not seeing this, I'd like them to challenge us and call it out, because if it's not happening in an area, what we want to do is to fix that quickly and be there and be that, as I've said before, that local expert on the ground who is there to support our partners.

Jenny: Chris, thank you.

Chris: Thank you.