Leadership Insights: Matt Gordon discusses our Specialty Lines Expansion

Mark Colegate:  

And now on Leadership Insights, I'm joined by Matt Gordon. He's Director of Specialty Lines and Real Estate here at Aviva. Matt, it's been a busy time for Specialty Lines over the last 12 months or so. Can you give us a bit of an update on what's been going on? 

Matt Gordon: 

Yeah, happy to do, Mark. So, I guess I probably have to start with, we've been progressing with our plans for our new Lloyd's platform, Probitas, that we bought. We've had great success there. Probitas posted their best-ever results in 2024. We've launched seven new specialty products through Probitas in the last few months. We've seconded over 60 underwriters. So, there's been lots to be excited about there. And I sit here now at the end of Q1 and we're ahead of our plan on the growth volumes we've projected through Probitas, which is great and a big call out to our brokers for having been so supportive. So, that's brilliant because obviously our ambition is to be a leading dual platform insurer. Within my area, we're about to break the billion-dollar mark as we continue to drive profitable growth. And our ambition is to kick on to one and a half billion. And Lloyd's is a really integral part of that. I think probably the other sort of aspect is sort of launching new propositions beyond just the Lloyd's play to our brokers and clients. So, we've been really stretching into the lead multinational and captive side. Great success there. We've won two £10 million plus clients that are lead multinational captives, including our largest ever win in Global Corporate and Specialty. So, that's been really great. And then on some other side, we've launched three new product propositions. Political violence and terrorism. We've launched ports and terminals. We've launched contingency. We've hired 13 new underwriters. You can see there's been a huge amount going on.  

Mark Colegate:  

What are some of the main concerns, as you speak to brokers, that they're telling you that they've got themselves and for their clients at the moment? 

Matt Gordon: 

Wow. Yeah. I mean, I think we have to start with the macroeconomic environment. So, we've gone from a time, you know, even six months ago, where there was a lot of geopolitical uncertainty to a time of tariffs and huge geo-economic uncertainty. And so, you know, supply chains, inflation, interest rates, balance sheet resilience, you know, those sort of macroeconomic concerns are definitely front and centre for clients. If we sort of bring that back to more insurance-related risk, I think it's fair to say that, you know, cyber-attacks, of course, remain prevalent. Things like civil and social unrest are very concerning. So, obviously, you had the Chile riots, we had the South Africa riots, we've had riots in the US. And actually, we live in an ever more uncertain world. So, that's the key concern. And then I think, you know, it's not quite as front and centre as it used to be, but clients still know we have to transition to net zero. And so, how do we ameliorate our carbon impacts? There's still a concern for many of our clients and brokers. 

Mark Colegate:  

Especially in a nutshell, then, what's Aviva doing to help brokers solve some of these problems? 

Matt Gordon: 

Great question. So, I mean, let's be truthful. Around the macroeconomic environment, there is a very limited amount we can do. But if we think about the geopolitical uncertainty, you know, we've launched a political violence and terrorism product that caters for losses arising from that. And we, you know, we've absolutely seen lots and lots of interest from our clients in buying that product. We're also very conscious that large multinational clients or clients with customers overseas have to send their employees overseas to some of these unstabilised countries. And, you know, we've looked at a number of things. So, we have a business travel app as an example. We help our customers comply with the latest ISO standard to ensure that their employees are safe when they travel overseas. So, we've tried to do a number of things that hopefully assist our clients and brokers in these quite uncertain times. 

Mark Colegate:  

You touched on ESG issues in a previous answer. So, could you give us some examples of some of the things you're doing in that space, particularly because it's a topic that's not really top of the news agenda the same way it was one or two years ago? 

Matt Gordon: 

Yeah, absolutely, Mark. And I think that's a really fair reflection. The cost of living crisis and, you know, the macroeconomic concerns have sort of slightly taken it off the radar. But, Aviva, we still remain absolutely committed to net zero and playing our part in supporting that transition. And a few proof points around that is, you know, we have an ambition to be a leading insurer in the renewable energy space in the UK. We have rolled out appetite for new technologies like hydrogen. We are looking at things like carbon sequestration. We want to be one of the few insurers that can provide a lead proposition in the offshore wind and subsea cable space, all critical capabilities for our transition. And I think also we've taken some feedback from our clients and brokers that we cannot suddenly go from oil and gas to renewables. You know, some of our clients need some support in that transition and gas in particular, which has half the carbon footprint of coal, is one of those transition fuels. And so, we've expanded our appetite to support clients that are on that progression journey towards net zero. So, I think that's one key thing. We are looking at low-carbon building materials and the support we can provide clients there. And the two obvious areas are cross-laminated timber because timber has half the embodied carbon of the reinforced concrete sector and also low-carbon concrete. 

Mark Colegate: 

Well, that brings me on to our next question. What next from Aviva? 

Matt Gordon:

So, if we look at the sort of next 12 months ahead, very much you can expect to see a joined-up real estate and construction client proposition. I think you'll also see new proposition launches, although I can't say exactly what those will be right now. You'll see continued investment as we continue to build out our dual platform proposition and you'll see us looking at how do we make more and more value out of our Lloyd's Probitas acquisition.  

Mark Colegate: 

You've been describing a growth strategy that's about becoming larger, focusing on bigger corporate clients, London market. Where does this leave regional brokers in the UK? 

Matt Gordon:

Really great question, Mark. And I guess I've focused on that sort of London market side because that's where we're underrepresented and we see most potential for growth. But our heartland is absolutely the UK PLC, the SME business, regional independent brokers. We're 100% committed to those and we have additional investment to accelerate regional specialty growth with exactly those brokers. We have a new digital marine proposition going live very soon. We're looking at additional underwriters in Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, etc. And where we're rolling out new capabilities, whether that's in construction or renewable energy, that will 100% be available to those regional brokers in the same way it's available to our London market brokers. 

Mark Colegate: 

We have to leave it there, Matt Gordon. Thank you. 

Matt Gordon:

Thank you.