Etrading Q&A: Ageas increases commercial capability to boost quotability

The Insurance Times Etrading Survey 2020 is now open to brokers. While the survey is live, we will be speaking to a wide variety of insurers and software houses that are involved in the survey, to discuss the progress made over the last year as well as what future developments will benefit brokers.

Here, we speak to chief underwriting officer Adam Clarke, from Ageas, on topical service factors being investigated in our annual etrading survey.

One of these service areas is usability and trading ease. What developments have been made in this area over the last 12 months that benefits brokers?

Our focus over the last 12 months has been to make digital trading easy for our commercial products, empowering brokers to use digital systems to best effect. Listening to our brokers, it’s clear that they benefit from having experienced, empowered underwriters available to support them and we have a programme in place to develop the skills of our underwriters and ensure we are available to assist brokers when required.

Quotability is another key service area we discuss in the Insurance Times Etrading Survey 2020.  Have there been any developments in this field that benefits brokers?

We have increased quotability to reduce referrals. However, where a referral is required – we make it easy. Ageas has a team of dedicated digital analysts that review data across all digital platforms, checking and improving quotability. This means that our commercial capability has significantly increased and we are investing heavily in this team to ensure we are aligned with market demands and technological advances.

A further service factor we are looking at is around the quality of support provided to brokers online. What developments have been made in this area over the last 12 months that aids brokers?

In the last 12 months we have increased our Live Chat capability as well as reviewed the help text and product information for commercial products available on our website to support brokers.

What about the quality and number of questions asked to brokers? Have you noted any changes in this area over the past year? 

We look to strike the balance between too few questions that can cause confidence in the product to waiver and causing brokers frustration by asking too many questions. We are working with data providers to support the enrichment of our question sets for our commercial products with data already available, thereby minimising the number of questions we need to ask. The quality and number of questions asked is a challenge for the entire insurance industry but striking the right balance has been a core priority for Ageas over the last 12 months. This work will continue over the next year.

And finally, another service area being investigated in the Insurance Times Etrading Survey 2020 is around the breadth of cover and the product range being provided to brokers and their customers over the last 12 months. What developments have been made in this area over the last 12 months that benefits brokers?

All of our commercial motor and non-motor core products are available via our extranet. Work is ongoing to expand the availability of these products through the major software houses. New products are expected to be released in the next 12 months.