Why Ageas, Aviva and QBE were named insurers of the year at 2024’s Insurance Times Awards

The annual Insurance Times Awards stands out as a highlight of the UK general insurance (UKGI) calendar, bringing together industry leaders to celebrate the sector’s greatest achievements of the past year.

Among the most coveted honours of the evening are the awards for Personal Lines Insurer of the Year, Commercial Lines Insurer of the Year and the ultimate title of General Insurer of the Year.

At 2024’s event, held on 4 December 2024 at Mayfair’s Grosvenor House, Aviva once again claimed the General Insurer of the Year prize, retaining its title from last year and cementing its position at the top of UKGI for the 10th year running. The insurer has won this award a total of 12 times since 2011.

The insurer’s most recent win, however, comes off the back of a strong underwriting performance – this was showcased in Insurance Times’ Top 50 Insurers 2024 report, published in October 2024, where Aviva reclaimed the top spot from Axa to rank as the largest insurer in UKGI with gross written premium (GWP) of £6.7bn.

This represents an increase of 23% compared with the previous year, fuelled by its £249m acquisition of Probitas, which sealed Aviva’s return to the Lloyd’s market through Syndicate 1492. This deal completed in July 2024.

Insurance DataLab’s analysis of the latest Solvency and Financial Condition Reports (SFCRs) revealed that Aviva reported an all lines combined operating ratio (COR) of 98.4% for 2023 in its non-Lloyd’s business.

While this represents a three percentage point decline compared to 2022’s 95.4% ratio, it also means that Aviva has now reported a positive underwriting result in each of the last four years.

Aviva’s biggest business line outside of Lloyd’s is property insurance, with GWP of £2.6bn – equal to 40% of its overall book of business. The insurer reported a profitable 99.2% COR for 2023 in this line, compared to a UK average of 102%.

Meanwhile, the insurer’s second largest book of business, motor insurance, reported a breakeven COR of 100% – around 19 percentage points better than the UK average of 119%, despite rising 10 percentage points from 2022’s COR of 90%.

Other profitable business lines for Aviva include medical expenses with a 90.6% COR, marine, aviation and transport (68.6%), assistance (88.1%), income protection (76.1%) and miscellaneous financial loss (54.2%).

Indeed, the only business lines for which Aviva reported an underwriting loss were general liability insurance, with a COR of 105.1%, and credit and surety insurance, which recorded a COR of 129.8% for 2023.

Newly acquired Syndicate 1492, meanwhile, reported an underwriting profit of £40.3m for 2023 after it returned to profit-making territory following an underwriting loss of £3.5m for 2022.

These figures all combined to earn Aviva a group Insurance DataLab underwriting performance rating of 64% for 2024, compared to a market average of 62%.

The market intelligence firm’s proprietary underwriting performance rating compares insurers’ latest CORs, three-year aggregate CORs and COR improvements over the last year.

Aviva Insurance received an underwriting score of 63% from Insurance DataLab, while Gresham Insurance – Aviva’s other non-Lloyd’s underwriting arm – received a rating of 86%. However, it is worth noting that Gresham Insurance accounts for less than 2% of Aviva’s total premium, with GWP of just £98.2m for 2023.

Syndicate 1492 earned an underwriting performance rating of 74%.

Aviva also performed well in Insurance Times’ annual Five Star Rating Reports, earning four stars for both its commercial lines and personal lines performance in 2024. This research polled 550 UKGI brokers between October and December 2023.

Brokers gave Aviva a score of 3.95 out of five for commercial lines, with the insurer finishing fourth out of 13 insurers. In personal lines, Aviva once again secured third place – despite its overall score falling by 0.1 to 3.88 out of five.

The insurer has also improved significantly when it comes to complaints handling, with the number of complaints per 1,000 policies in force for Aviva Insurance falling from a high of 8.55 in H1 2019 to just 3.04 over the first half of 2024.

This means that the insurer has improved its performance every half year since the start of 2021 and now sits comfortably ahead of the industry average of 4.45.

The picture is even better for Gresham Insurance, which received just 1.68 complaints per 1,000 policies over the first six months of 2024.

Personal lines prowess

When it comes to personal lines insurance specifically, Ageas has retained its crown from 2023 as it once again came out on top after returning to underwriting profitability in 2023 with a COR of 92.7%.

This is some 13.7 percentage points better than the previous year’s 106.4% COR and means Ageas has now reported an underwriting profit in five of the last six years.

This strong underwriting result was achieved while also managing to grow its premium base, with the insurer reporting a 20% jump in GWP to almost £1.3bn as it climbed three places to 20th in the Top 50 Insurers 2024 final ranking.

This helped to earn the insurer an Insurance DataLab underwriting performance rating of 69% – around seven points ahead of the industry average of 62%.

The insurer should be particularly pleased with the performance of its motor book, which accounts for more than three-quarters of its total premiums with GWP of £987.6m. Ageas has now reported six consecutive years of underwriting profits in this highly competitive and challenging line.

Ageas’ motor COR stood at 86.3% for 2023 against an average for the UK as a whole of 119%, with the insurer consistently outperforming the market aggregate in this business line.

The insurer also reported an improved performance in its property book – its second biggest business line, with £275.5m GWP – after it knocked 12.6 percentage points off its COR to reach 113.8% for 2023. While this is still firmly in loss-making territory, it is a big improvement on 2022’s 126.4% COR.

Like Aviva, Ageas also performs strongly on complaints handling, receiving just 1.31 complaints for every 1,000 policies it had in force over the first half of 2024.

The insurer has additionally reported significant improvements in the experience it offers to brokers.

Ageas received a score of 3.96 out of five in Insurance Times’ 2024 Five Star Rating Report for personal lines – an improvement of 0.14 points on the previous year as it climbed to second place behind Covéa Insurance.

The insurer received a four star rating for this result – climbing from three stars the previous year. It also received a five star rating from brokers this year for its overall underwriting experience – a significant improvement from the two star rating it received in the report’s previous annual edition.

Commercial success

In commercial lines, QBE has risen to claim the awards crown after it reported a very healthy 2023 COR of 83.4% for its non-Lloyd’s operations.

While this was slightly higher than the previous year’s 81.6% COR, it is still some 18.6 percentage points ahead of the UK average and marks the fourth consecutive year of underwriting profits for the insurer.

Across QBE’s two Lloyd’s syndicates – 386 and 2999 – the insurer reported an underwriting profit of £135.8m, up from £71m the previous year.

This strong performance helped to earn QBE a group Insurance DataLab underwriting performance rating of 71%.

Outside of the Lloyd’s market, property insurance continues to be QBE’s biggest line of business, with GWP of £482.8m – more than a third of its overall book of business – and the insurer reported a highly profitable COR of 77.9%.

Incredibly, this is some 24.1 percentage points ahead of the UK average property COR, with property insurers having failed to make an underwriting profit on aggregate since 2019.

Conversely, QBE has reported an underwriting profit from its property book in each of the last three years, achieving a COR of less than 80% every year in this time frame.

The insurer has also performed strongly in Insurance Times’ annual Five Star Rating Report for commercial lines, finishing third overall after earning a score of 3.96 out of five from UKGI brokers.

The insurer managed to improve its score across three of the five service factors reviewed within the report, receiving its highest score for the overall quality of cover metric, recording a result of 4.07 out of five – up from 4.05 the previous year.

QBE’s biggest improvement came in the overall claims experience metric – the insurer earned an additional 0.06 points for a score of 3.89, finishing third overall.