Biba 2024: Aviva keen to boost broker scheme partnerships and back niche MGAs

Aviva has increased its focus on building broker scheme partnerships and providing capacity for managing general agents (MGAs) as it looks to grow in areas “that we don’t necessarily write on the open market”, according to Rebecca Gambrell, portfolio director at Aviva.

Speaking exclusively to Insurance Times at Biba’s 2024 conference in Manchester this month (May 2024), Gambrell said Aviva is “focused on how we grow” capacity partnerships with brokers and MGAs – especially as this has been an area the insurer has “been reasonably light on” in the past.

Currently, Aviva operates around 100 broker schemes “of various sizes” and provides capacity for two personal lines and two commercial lines MGAs, including Touchstone and Q Underwriting. Boosting these numbers is “definitely something that I am keen to explore and grow,” Gambrell said.

‘Extreme specialism’

The types of MGAs that Aviva wants to work with have “specialism and expertise that they can bring” to the insurer’s portfolio, Gambrell explained. For her, a key area of focus will be non-motor commercial lines – however no business line is off the table.

“There’s some fantastic MGAs out there, so it’s about finding the right fit for Aviva,” she explained.

Equally, Gambrell – who started at Aviva in December 2023 after around 14 years at Zurich – wants to ensure that any MGA partnership is centred around writing business that Aviva does not currently provide in the open market.

She continued: “Where MGAs play a massive and important part is in those areas where they’ve got an extreme specialism and they understand that sort of business – whatever it is.

“For me, they play nicely alongside insurers because actually, we don’t have that expertise in whatever it is and they can help bring that to the table. That’s a really important part. Sometimes they can be more agile.”

Scheme potential

Aviva has a similar approach to broker scheme opportunities, Gambrell noted.

Here, the insurer is seeking “the right opportunities and ones that fit within our strategy and appetite”.

Gambrell said: “The ones that are really interesting for us are ones where they’ve got a particular specialism or they’ve got some good technology and portfolio management around it that means you can have really engaging conversations on it.

“Aviva’s got quite a wide appetite in general, so for me, the schemes world is an interesting one.

“It’s one where you can find niche opportunities that we don’t necessarily write on the open market from an Aviva perspective. Those are the ones that I think are interesting to us. They’ve got that expertise that they can bring.”

Gambrell highlighted that Aviva is “ready and raring to go” in terms of embracing scheme growth – especially after building out a dedicated team under Donna Smith, the insurer’s head of schemes and delegated underwriting authority operations, who started in January 2024.

She added that there is no particular set number of schemes that the insurer is looking to reach.

“The schemes world is an interesting one,” Gambrell said. “It’s about making sure that we’ve got the right teams and the right support for those schemes brokers because it is a very different world.

“There’s a lot that we can do in that space in terms of supporting [brokers] with data and how we modernise schemes. There’s been a bigger focus on that and equipping the teams with the right empowerments.

“We’ve bought some more underwriting expertise in to bolster that and be more responsive to brokers and have that visibility. We’re focused on how we grow in that space.

“The team is set up and they are ready and raring to go, so how do we grow in that space and what does that look like for us?”

The process of modernising schemes at Aviva is focused around being ”more responsive” and ”sharing insight”, Gambrell added.

She continued: ”We’re looking at how we can improve the data landscape in schemes, how we can bring data to life and share insights with our scheme brokers in a timely way so that we can work together with our partners to drive growth within our target appetites with them.

”We’re also focused on making the schemes process easier, with the introduction of our underinsurance tool for schemes brokers. In the second half of 2024, we will be releasing further enhancements that will reduce unnecessary referrals for our brokers.”