Rebecca Gambrell: Aviva seeks to ‘raise the bar’ on eTrading service following 2024’s five star success

Insurer Aviva has committed to setting “a very high bar for ourselves” when it comes to trading with brokers digitally, as Insurance Times’ 2025 eTrading survey continues to poll UK general insurance brokers on their eTrading experiences with insurer partners.

According to Insurance Times’ Five Star Rating Report: eTrading 2024, which polled 700 UKGI brokers and was published in May 2024, 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 software houses was also applauded by brokers, with survey respondents awarding Aviva another five star score – for the third consecutive year in this category.

Speaking exclusively to Insurance Times, Rebecca Gambrell, Aviva’s SME and delegated authorities managing director, says that while “it is obviously fantastic” that the insurer has continued to receive positive feedback from brokers on its eTrading service, Aviva wants “to continue to improve and to continue to hold that position” in Insurance Times’ annual report.

She explains: “We constantly feel pressure to improve and to make sure that we’re not standing still. The SME market is constantly evolving and we need to make sure that we evolve with both our brokers and their customers.

“We do feel the pressure and we hold a very high bar for ourselves. We want to consistently improve and consistently make sure that we’re delivering.

“It is obviously fantastic getting five stars and for it to have happened six years in a row. But actually, what it gives us is this whole wealth of insight into what we can do to continue to improve and to continue to hold that position.

“We would like to continue to raise the bar on it. Absolutely no room for complacency.

“We’ve made significant steps to raise the bar on the level of business that you can write through Fast Trade, but we’ve also really been focused on ensuring that we’re delivering a first class service to support that proposition because that’s the most important thing.

“Service is incredibly important to us and we take it very seriously.”

Embracing change

Gambrell adds that Aviva has “delivered a huge amount over the last two to three years” in terms of its eTrading portfolio, but that the insurer is “still committed to developing our proposition”.

With this in mind, Aviva is making a raft of changes to its eTraded product suite this year, including launching two new eTrading propositions and updating its existing commercial combined product to be available on a modular basis.

The insurer also plans to introduce real-time capacity modelling to help speed up the eTrading referral process for brokers – Gambrell hopes this will be live from Q3 2025 across Aviva’s digital products.

She explains: “For me, [this is] about helping to improve service. Rather than managing our capacity in a more manual way, it means we can do it in real-time, [to] make sure that we’ve got the right number of underwriters on the phones or on live chat or answering referrals.

“It just helps us to manage the business a bit more flexibly and utilising technology rather than in a manual way.”

People focus

For Gambrell, this real-time capacity modelling tool will support Aviva’s people focus that underpins its eTrading offering for brokers – she believes that a key element of delivering good service to partner brokers is ensuring the insurer has “got the right level of people and the right number of people to be able to service the high number of calls and live chats that we have from our brokers”.

As well as having the right volume of staff to service brokers, Gambrell places equal emphasis on brokers being able to access underwriting decision-makers via eTraded channels.

She says: “We’re very much invested in making sure that when a broker does phone in or come to us through live chat, that the person behind that [front line contact] is equipped to make a decision, to give [brokers] the best advice and to make sure that they work with the broker in terms of those specialist needs that the client might have.”

Software house service

Although Fast Trade is the obvious jewel in Aviva’s eTrading crown, its service via software houses is not to be sniffed at either, also receiving a five star score from brokers last year.

However, brokers do still note a slight discrepancy between these two eTrading routes.

For example, 28% of the broker respondents polled for 2024’s report 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.

Gambrell admits that improving eTrading service via software houses is still a focus for Aviva.

She says: “We’re very committed to our software house side – it’s a huge part of the way that we do business in our SME portfolio. We’re absolutely focused on making sure that we’ve got the right service and upgrades.”

Gambrell adds that brokers can expect further improvements in this channel for 2025 as platform upgrades instigated on Fast Trade will hopefully be mirrored in Aviva’s work with software houses.

Gambrell explains: “One of the other things that we’re looking at is how we can deliver some of the enhancements that we have on Fast Trade in a software house environment. It’s obviously harder because it’s not your own extranet, but we are exploring options – for example, [our] client protection tools and how we can make those available in a software house, eTraded sense.”

Fundamentally, Gambrell confirms that “our brokers are absolutely at the heart” of Aviva’s eTrading developments – she is therefore keen to see the results of Insurance Times’ 2025 eTrading survey with UKGI brokers.

“We work very hard to achieve our five star rating and we’ll continue to do that – not just this year, but each year as well,” she notes.