Leadership Insights: Mid-Market Business Strategies and Challenges

Mark Colegate: Michael Yabantu is Managing Director of the Mid-Market business at Aviva. He joins me now. Michael, can you start by telling us a little bit about the team and your role within that?

Michael Yabantu: Yeah, sure. So Mid-Market for us is client, commercial clients up to 250 million turnover that we trade through our regional branch network. So that's 22 distinct geographies, but 14 physical offices across the UK. And we trade in excess of a billion pounds of premium, 550 staff across 13 different lines of business.

Mark Colegate: And this year, what have been the main improvements or the key deliverables that you've achieved?

Michael Yabantu: Yeah, this year's been really centred around, we've really been focused and responding to three things. It's been about visibility with our brokers and customers. Being responsive to be able to deliver the best service and executing on the promises that we make, really to be able to deliver the best products, the best service and the best outcomes for our customers. So in response to that, we've done a number of things. We've simplified our local branch structure. So we've brought together key disciplines across underwriting, claims, client and distribution. So every branch has a branch manager, a senior broker development manager, a claims service manager, and a client relationship manager. And that's really about giving brokers and customers access to that capability. Locally where they want to be served and accessed. We've also segregated our new business and renewal teams. And that's been really to allow them to deliver the best service in each of those areas. Alongside that, we continue to invest in our branch networks. So we've opened three new offices this year in Southampton, in Chelmsford, and a new office in Glasgow. So expanding our city centre presence. And again, that's about visibility being closer to our brokers and customers. We also have continued to invest in our people as well. So we've brought in new and additional capability in underwriting and in distribution. And alongside that, we've deployed in excess of 200 technical authority increases that really allows our frontline teams to make sure that they've got the appropriate authority. And our brokers and customers have got access to decision-makers, which we know is incredibly important. And then lastly, for data, AI and technology, we've continued to invest in those areas. And that's really been about ensuring that we can deliver efficiencies into the underwriting process, trading the most effective way with our brokers, and also delivering as much insight as we can so that our brokers and customers are as informed as they can be about the risk protection that they need.

Mark Colegate: And what would you say the main challenges that brokers are facing right now? And how do you go about working out what those are?

Michael Yabantu: Yeah, I mean, we commissioned a survey actually a few months ago across 250 brokers to understand exactly what are the key challenges that they're faced with. And there were three key headlines that came out of that. 83% of brokers said that they were focused on growing their businesses. The majority of brokers said that Insurer service across the market was the number one challenge for them. And equally the majority of the responses said that visibility and face-to-face meetings with insurers was one of the key solutions to be able to combat some of the service challenges. So we've made some great progress in that space based on some of the things that I mentioned before Mark, but some of the proof points and some of the data that we're seeing coming through as a result of some of those deliveries. We can see from a new business perspective, we're not only up in revenue, but we've written more new business customers than we had done last year, but also the breadth of trades that we're writing is far bigger than it was before. So we're really deploying as much of our appetite to brokers and customers. 93% of our renewals are going out at least 28 days in advance so getting them out early to engage in those conversations in a timely fashion. We've seen some great improvements in our telephony stats and we've also seen a 25% increase in our external engagement with brokers and customers. So a number of areas where we've made some significant improvements, but clearly there's still plenty more of opportunities for us to improve and be more consistent across the UK.

Mark Colegate: Well, on that point, what's the next set of key deliverables for you?

Michael Yabantu: Yeah, look, we absolutely continue into invest in the business this year and over the next few years. Some of the things that you can expect to see from us in the near future. So we will have a new Mid-Market multinational proposition launching by the end of this year and that's the ability to be able to provide solutions to customers that have got both UK and overseas exposures. We'll continue to refresh some of our existing products and we'll also look to invest in new capability and continue to develop specialisms in certain areas in response to broker feedback. And then lastly, from an underinsurance perspective because we know that 50% in excess of 50% of clients still remain underinsured in some capacity. So, you know, continues to be an industry challenge. We'll continue to invest in more data, in more insights so we can provide as much of that information to brokers and customers and continue to educate about the challenges around under insurance and why adequate protection is so important. So lots more exciting things to come from us.

Mark Colegate: And if there were a broker set in this chair, not me, what would you want to say to them?

Michael Yabantu: I'd say a huge thanks for your ongoing support. We really value the partnership and relationships that we have. I'd say secondly, please continue to give us your feedback. That's incredibly important. It helps us understand what's working well and what we can do to improve. And lastly, I'd say if there's anything that I've spoken about that sounds new or unfamiliar, then please reach out to your local teams, engage with us, talk to us and let's sit down and work out how we can trade more effectively together.

Mark Colegate: We have to leave it there, Michael Yabantu. Thank you.

Michael Yabantu: Thank you.

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