Will RSA’s reputation remain ‘Intact’ after rebrand?

In June 2021, Bidco, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian insurer Intact Financial Corporation, and Danish insurer Tryg A/S completed their acquisition of RSA.

The deal details saw Intact take over RSA’s Canadian, UK and international business, while Tryg A/S assumed control of RSA’s Sweden and Norway operations.

Fast forward to April 2025 and RSA has confirmed that – following its September 2023 deal to acquire Direct Line Group’s commercial lines operations – the insurer will be rebranding by the end of this year, adopting Intact’s moniker.

This decision is not without risk.

Bryan Banbury, chairman at broker Russell Scanlan, told Insurance Times: “RSA is a very well known and respected brand in the UK and, while Intact is a major overseas insurer, it is largely unknown here.

“If [the rebrand project is] done in a hurry, employees could find themselves frequently explaining that they work for Intact, which used to be RSA. I’m not sure that’s a great situation to be in.”

According to Guidewire’s upcoming Insurance Consumer Survey, due to be published in May 2025, aside from factors like price and the level of coverage, the greatest determinant of choosing an insurer – cited by 45% of UK insurance consumers – is whether it is a known insurance brand.

John Lyons, brand expert at consultancy Human Hatstand, said: “Any rebrand loses all of the brand equity that has been built up to that point. You are literally starting again as a brand in a category where you were once known.”

Although RSA dates back in one form or another to 1710, it can hardly be accused of chucking over three centuries of brand awareness down the toilet.

The actual name RSA only materialised in 2008. Since the merger of Royal Insurance and Sun Alliance in 1996, it had been known as Royal and Sun Alliance.

And if that name had massive value, then why did the insurer launch the More Than personal lines brand in 2001?

Substantial change

Since 2023, in particular, RSA has undergone significant restructuring – including selling More Than to Admiral Group and acquiring NIG from Direct Line Group.

So, effectively left with an entirely broker driven commercial lines business that operated under both the RSA and NIG names, switching to a single, new name has obvious advantages.

The insurer is the first to admit, however, that the RSA name – unlike that of Intact – was not exactly overflowing with goodwill from a service perspective and that recent decades had proved challenging.

It readily acknowledged, for example, that Royal Insurance’s expansion into the US disappointed, that the Royal Insurance and Sun Alliance merger was not resolved as successfully as the parties had hoped and that subsequent progress globally was lacklustre.

But the new group is now solely focused on the UK, Canada, the US and Europe and benefits significantly from being owned by Intact – the 12th largest property and casualty firm worldwide by market capitalisation that has an outstanding service reputation.

Ken Norgrove, chief executive of UK and international at RSA, said: “We spoke to brokers during [the] last 12 months about branding after the NIG acquisition and they essentially told us they didn’t really care what we called ourselves as long as we made sure we delivered on our service proposition.

“Our service standards had been floundering a little before the Intact acquisition, but we believe that we will outperform all our competitors on service during the next 12 months. Service is the entry point to growth.

“We want to be focused on outperforming [across] both service and technical expertise in the UK and integrating RSA and NIG into a single product proposition, price and brand was easier under [a] new name.”

What the market thinks

Few objective commentators were willing to speak on the record about RSA’s rebrand, but the feedback from those that were, as well as from anonymous sources, was decidedly mixed.

Lea Cheesbrough, managing director at Movo Partnership, said: “There is a sadness in such a solid and well respected brand disappearing from the industry. To me, RSA was the pinnacle of insurance sturdiness – but I also think in recent times it had struggled in the broking market.

“It seems right that Intact is the new brand as the change in service, vision and passion is clear to see and we are seeing the RSA management and staff move to become market leaders once again.”

Those wary of rebrands in financial services generally single out Abrdn’s humiliating recent U-turn in March 2025 as an example – where it reversed the 2021 decision to revamp the Aberdeen Group name – but the Intact brand is considered less controversial.

Financial services brand consultant Lucian Camp, principal at Lucian Camp Consulting, believes Intact is “a bit of a weird name for an insurance company” on the grounds that its products come into play precisely when things stop being intact. But he’s confident the name is not wacky enough to trigger serious objection.

He said: “No one really cares very much what insurance companies call themselves and no one is going to miss the RSA name, which – even by insurance company standards – was the dullest in the universe.”

Positive examples

If any financial services rebrand is singled out as a triumph, it is invariably the 2009 change from Norwich Union to Aviva.

Aviva reported that, in terms of spontaneous brand awareness, the Aviva name was recognised by more people than the Norwich Union one less than a year after the change.

But this success did not come without a cost – the insurer ran a high profile advertising campaign at the time, featuring celebrities who had changed their names. It also sponsored ITV drama premieres and UK athletics.

The rebrand of Liverpool Victoria to LV= in 2007 also proved effective. According to the March 2025 YouGov BrandIndex Lite, LV= has the third most positive buzz of any British insurance brand – after Aviva and Axa. Its findings placed RSA down in 19th spot, however.

Miriam Boote, managing director at brand and creative agency Designate – which was behind the LV= rebrand – feels that the extensive M&A activity in UK insurance provides RSA with an opportunity to stand out with a new name.

She explained: “It needs to localise the Intact brand for very specific audiences in the UK and Ireland, making sure that it is fully understood and relatable. JP Morgan’s 2021 Chase launch was a good example of how to do this.

“Even if it doesn’t have anything new per se, positioning Intact as a positive change and giving the allure of something new and different could be an interesting strategy.”

Having spent four years aligning its values with Intact, RSA is in no doubt what its proposition now stands for. How effectively it can communicate this, however, remains to be seen.