’Brokers want to understand, and here again, what the ambition is’, says director
There has been more demand from brokers to visit RSA at the 2024 Biba Conference following the insurer’s acquisition of Direct Line Group’s (DLG’s) commercial lines operations.
That was according to Alan Houston, strategic sales and accounts director at RSA, who said that the insurer’s diary was “jam packed” for this year’s conference.
RSA agreed a deal to acquire DLG’s NIG and FarmWeb brands in September last year and integrated the two firms on 1 May 2024.
As brokers descend on Manchester for the Biba Conference, Houston spoke to Insurance Times about what RSA’s plans were for discussing the deal.
He said that “brokers want to understand, and here again, what the ambition is and what we are doing about it”.
”There has been – as there always is but probably more so this year – a real demand to see the teams at all levels,” he said at the conference.
“So, there is not much give in the diary.
“But, we are also really keen that our teams are freed up to speak to brokers in an unplanned way.
“We’ve got business development managers (BDMs), we’ve got underwriters, we’ve got people working in our claims team and we’ve got our executive team here.
“[So], all levels [and we] make sure we are open to listening and understanding how we can improve.”
‘Coming together’
The acquisition was agreed for an initial fee of £520m, with potential for up to a further £30m contingent on earnout provisions related to financial performance of the acquired business lines.
Read: RSA announces new commercial lines leadership team ahead of Mooney departure
Read: Completion of RSA’s NIG acquisition ‘accelerates’ insurer’s plans
Explore more M&A-related content here or discover other news stories here
When the deal was complete, RSA said it “couldn’t be more excited as we embark on this transformational journey in our commercial lines business and welcome almost 750 new colleagues to the RSA family”.
Houston said RSA and the acquired firms were “coming together as a team” and that this had been highlighted as the Biba Conference.
“We’ve got a big team of RSA, we’ve got a big team of NIG – you will see we are quite close and we are really joined up,” he added.
“We are coming together as a team and we have got to be absolutely present.”
His career began in 2019, when he joined a local north London newspaper after graduating from the University of Sheffield with a first-class honours degree in journalism.
He took up the position of deputy news editor at Insurance Times in March 2023, before being promoted to his current role in May 2024.View full Profile
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