Aviva refuses to be complacent on eTrading service following record report result

Aviva has promised its broker partners that there is “no room for complacency” when it comes to evolving and developing its eTrading proposition – despite the fact that the insurer’s extranet has received the maximum five star score from brokers participating in Insurance Times’ annual eTrading survey for the past six consecutive years.

According to Insurance Times’ Five Star Rating Report: eTrading 2024, which polled 700 UKGI brokers, Aviva’s extranet – Fast Trade – received the highest five star result for the sixth year running, with an overall score of 4.26.

Its service via eTrading software platforms was also applauded by brokers, with survey respondents awarding Aviva with yet another five star score – for the third consecutive year in this category.

The report noted: “Aviva Fast Trade scored five stars in each of the five service factors explored [in the survey]. It achieved its highest score in usability and trading ease with a score of 4.44. Aviva Fast Trade’s lowest score was in quality of support, which had a slight decline in score year-on-year, going from 4.12 in 2023 to 4.07 in 2024.”

The other service factors investigated in Insurance Times’ annual report – which was this year published in May 2024 – include breadth of cover and product range, whether the question set enables insurers to match products to customers’ needs and quotability.

For Rebecca Gambrell, SME portfolio director at Aviva, the insurer’s consistent performance stems from its understanding that “service is key” and that eTrading is not simply straight through processing on a digital platform.

“There’s a lot of work and interaction points with brokers and that’s what’s really key here,” she explained.

This includes hosting webinars for brokers and engaging in plenty of two way feedback loops, ensuring that broker partners understand Aviva’s risk appetite and know how to use its platforms.

The insurer additionally strives to respond to broker feedback promptly, whether this feedback is elicited from research such as Insurance Times’ report, Aviva’s own internal annual broker survey or through ad hoc conversations with business development managers.

Gambrell cited Aviva’s tradespeople product as an example here – the insurer updated its coverage in this line of business in April 2024.

She continued: “We expanded our tradespeople product on the basis that [brokers] wanted some higher limits, to be able to trade more on that [eTrading] platform.

“We’ve taken that feedback and implemented it and it’s that feedback loop that says ‘we hear you’ and then we show that we’re doing something about it. Hopefully we make it easy to talk to us and that really helps us then feed back into those products.

“We’ve worked on expanding five of our core products as well. It’s something that we continuously do. It’s not a one and done thing. We continue to look at how we can expand [our eTraded products] and what makes sense.

“A lot of brokers at the moment are looking at digitisation strategies and how they can place more digitally, so that cycle I can see absolutely continuing.”

Aviva’s five core products available via Fast Trade include cyber respond, property owners, plant and equipment, commercial combined and shop and salon.

Some of the updates the insurer has implemented include making cyber respond available to quote and buy, making property owners cover suitable to insure larger portfolios and quote across multiple premises, adding more limit options to commercial combined policies and offering more sums insured options for shop and salon customers.

Creating a platform ‘level playing field’

One facet of its eTrading service that Aviva has improved is bridging the gap between its extranet service and what it offers via software houses – this previously lagged behind the quality brokers experienced on Fast Trade.

Gambrell explained that Aviva has sought to ensure that “both platforms are on a level playing field”.

She said: “Fast Trade, we’re really proud of. But eTrading [via platforms], the products and the propositions, we’ve bought them up to the same standard.

“We recognise that the eTrading platform is one of the main areas of business for brokers to go to because they can get that easy comparison. And so we just made sure that the products and propositions are aligned across it and that they’re the best ones we offer, but also that the service behind it is there as well.

“That’s what we’ve put the hard work into, to make sure that there is parity across the two [platforms] and clearly that’s started to show in the survey [results] over the last three years, which is fantastic.”

The Five Star Rating Report: eTrading 2024 pinpointed that 28% of broker respondents prefer to use Aviva’s extranet rather than trade via a software house because they feel they will get a better price for their customers, while 23% believe they will be offered better coverage.

Just under half (46%), meanwhile, opt to use Fast Trade because of its ease of use.

Comparing the Fast Trade and software house journeys, Gambrell explained that Aviva’s extranet is “slicker” than having to trade via a software house.

She said: “Our Fast Trade is so successful and people go on it because the journey is better. For me, the journey and some of the questions are slightly easier on Fast Trade and we’ve got more bells and whistles – around the artificial intelligence we’ve bought into it.

“The seamlessness of it or simplicity of it is a big draw from that Fast Trade perspective.”

Across Fast Trade and its work with software houses, Gambrell noted that Aviva has no intention of “being complacent”, however.

She continued: “We continue to evolve [our eTrading proposition] and for me, it is about not being complacent.

“Our competitors continue to evolve and they’re catching up [to us] in some areas. It’s important that we continue to make sure that we’re improving and that we’re listening to our brokers and understanding their customers, so that we can understand how to evolve that platform – especially as more people want to place more [business] digitally now as well. [There is] no room for complacency.”

Supporting brokers

In terms of supporting brokers that want to trade more complex risks digitally, Gambrell noted that Aviva had adopted a three-pronged approach.

This includes firstly “enabling the system to be able to do that”. Secondly, creating confidence by “helping our brokers understand exactly what our products can and can’t do and what the appetite is” and thirdly, “making sure that we’ve got our underwriters there and empowered on the frontline”.

She continued: “We’re really focused on training our underwriters and making sure that we’ve got the right licence levels there to support those more complex journeys and more complex customers.

“One of our focuses right now is how do we continue to bolster that, particularly as we expand and push the limits of digital. How can we make that hybrid world between true fast flow digital trading and trading in a digital environment where actually, it’s still a trading environment, so there are underwriters there to have these conversations. That’s a big focus for us at the moment.”

As for responding to broker referrals promptly and efficiently, Gambrell noted that this comes down to resourcing, capacity and capability.

“We’re starting to look at some more technology that we can bring in to help that real-time capacity modelling as well, which will further help improve that,” she added.

This real-time capacity modelling will also benefit Aviva’s live chat functionality, Gambrell continued.

“Real-time capacity modelling will really help with that because it will make sure that the right people are there at the right time – particularly if you’ve got bottlenecks first thing in the morning or around lunchtime, when you have more queries than normal,” she said.

Celebration

Gambrell is incredibly aware of the collaboration that has been undertaken to achieve Aviva’s consistently high eTrading scores from brokers.

In recognition, she is adamant that the insurer will be organising a celebratory cross-team drinks event “in a local restaurant near to the Perth office” in Scotland “over the next couple of months”. All of the underwriters will also be receiving a small gift each.

Gambrell said: “[We are going to] get the teams together and just give them a chance to really, truly celebrate it. Sometimes these [results] come out and you can be like ‘yay, well done’ and then everyone just goes back to their jobs. It’s a nice time to put an actual event around it.

“There’s a lot of excitement around [this year’s result]. [The teams] put a lot of effort into what they do every day and to get recognised and rewarded for that for the sixth year in a row is fantastic.

“It can be quite easy to rest on your laurels and think ‘oh well, we did it last year. I’m sure it’ll be fine’. But you can see the passion and the energy that [has been] put in across all the teams – not just the frontline underwriters.

“We’re going to have a celebration just to really recognise that.”