Aviva to launch new digital products and modularise eTraded commercial combined offering

EXCLUSIVE: Insurer Aviva is making a raft of changes to its digital product offering, including launching two new eTrading propositions and updating its existing commercial combined product to be available on a modular basis.

The two new digital products Aviva is building include excess of loss and contractors combined, which will be “a beefed up tradespeople product that caters for larger contractor type businesses”, according to Rebecca Gambrell, Aviva’s managing director for SME and delegated authorities.

She further described the contractors combined policy as having “core commercial combined” elements as a base, with “contract works, hired in plant [and] owned plant” layers of cover included.

These two new products will be available for brokers via Aviva’s extranet, Fast Trade, as well as through software houses. Gambrell predicted a Q4 2025 launch date.

For Gambrell, these additions will ensure Aviva can cater to the nuanced needs of the SME market, running alongside the insurer’s current digital product suite, which is more suited to mid-market sized firms.

She explained: “This helps plug that gap for the SMEs and there’s not a huge amount in the market in terms of contractors combined. There [are] a few carriers that do offer it from a digital perspective, but I think there’s a gap that we want to fill there.”

Commercial combined scope

In terms of Aviva’s eTraded commercial combined product – which currently has around 10,000 policyholders – Gambrell noted that the insurer is revamping the structure of this specific proposition over the course of 2025, moving away from a typical package-based offering to instead provide a more flexible, “modular” policy, where brokers can pick and mix elements of cover that best suit their clients’ needs, creating something that is more bespoke.

Fundamentally, the insurer’s online commercial combined product provides property and liability cover of up to £10m of turnover for manufacturing, wholesale, retail, services and leisure businesses.

The core pillars of this cover include public liability, employers’ liability, stock and contents, however the new modular format coming into force this year will enable Aviva to introduce a range of optional covers that brokers can select to tailor clients’ eTraded policies.

For example, brokers will be able to add buildings cover, business interruption, computer breakdown, stock in the open, loss of licence, engineering breakdown, goods in transit and personal accident insurances, to name a few.

Aviva’s newly created products – such as the contractors combined – will also be able to be bolted on once launched.

“Previously, it’s been a very packaged-based product,” Gambrell said.

“We’re looking at making that much more flexible – making it a modular product to make sure that our brokers can pick the appropriate covers for their customers without having to either pay for things that they don’t necessarily need or aren’t appropriate, so it just gives them more flexibility.”

Alongside these brass tacks of the new commercial combined modules, Aviva is additionally introducing cross-sell functionality, where artificial intelligence dashboards will respond to the quote details inputted by a broker to recommend other appropriate covers that may be of interest based on the client’s information, such as cyber or mini fleet.

The insurer will also continue to flag potential areas of underinsurance, using its proprietary tool which launched back in 2021.

However, it is not just the commercial combined digital product that has received a refresh, but the supporting team structure too.

Gambrell explained: “We’ve created a specific team for commercial combined insurance now that has got some of our most experienced underwriters, so that they can trade much more closely with brokers. So, [it is] less of the traditional digital model of old, where it’s all straightforward processing.

“We’ve got a team of dedicated and experienced underwriters sitting there, ready to pick up phones, ready to call our brokers. [It is] traded in a much more hybrid way from perhaps some of the traditional digital models that are out there in the market.”

More change afoot

When Insurance Times last caught up with Aviva on its eTrading offering in July 2024, Gambrell confirmed that the insurer was planning to update its five core products that are available via Fast Trade. This includes cyber respond, property owners, plant and equipment, commercial combined and shop and salon.

Gambrell has made good on this promise, as well as pinpointed further areas of development.

She said: “We’ve done a significant volume of enhancements to our current product base. We’ve expanded our product criteria to allow larger risks to be placed online, so whether that’s the maximum number of employees that you can have on tradesmen, or the amount of contract works that you can have.

“We’ve also increased our sums insured limits on all our property-based products as well. And alongside that limit stretching, we’ve also stretched our underwriting appetite so that we can place more complex risks online.

“So, whether that’s USA or Canada exports, or if it’s the number of trades, we’ve really focused on being able to expand that appetite, expand the limits, to make sure that it’s giving our brokers and their customers what they need from a digital product.

“We are refreshing our freight proposition, which will be out in the first half of this year. We’re also looking at completely refreshing our professional indemnity products, so making that more available on an eTraded basis across the whole range of property liability and also our specialty lines covers too.”

Aviva has additionally enhanced its cover across other complex products too, in a bid to better bridge the gap between insurances SMEs would buy and those mid-market firms would purchase, enabling “a more seamless progression if the business is growing, [has] got larger and [needs] to seamlessly transition into that mid-market space”.

Gambrell said: “We’ve done a lot of work to try and balance those and make sure there’s not a completely different product – suddenly you’ve outgrown one and it looks like something completely different when you get around to renewal.”

Greater online appetite

The primary driver behind this suite of changes has been to empower brokers to place larger, more complex risks online – something brokers have been talking to Aviva about, Gambrell said, as feedback from broker partners has informed the insurer’s tranche of updates.

This feedback has come from ad hoc conversations throughout the year, as well as from Insurance Times’ annual Five Star Rating Report: ETrading.

She continued: “We want to be able to give our brokers confidence in our service and products, but also the confidence to place larger and more complex risks online.

“How do we give [brokers] the confidence that they can place these risks [online]? How do we make sure that they understand our appetite and what we’re comfortable to offer online?

“So, [while] all the product stuff in terms of expanding limits or appetites is all great and fantastic, we also need to complement that with the service and the teams to help build confidence with the brokers.”

According to Insurance Times’ Five Star Rating Report: ETrading 2024, which polled 700 UKGI brokers, Fast Trade received the highest five star result for the sixth year running, with an overall score of 4.26. This year’s survey, which will form the basis for the 2025 iteration of this report, is currently open for responses until 23 March 2025.