RSA woos best brokers with exclusive access to top underwriters

RSA has officially opened its first platinum trading site, which it says will deepen its relationship with top brokers by facilitating face-to-face deals with its most senior underwriters.

RSA’s 15 most senior underwriters in the South East have moved to the site in Redhill, Surrey. They have been assigned to act as the main contact for each of the 22 key brokers RSA has identified as platinum.

“Our brokers are asking us for direct access to the real decision-makers who can make trading decisions there and then,” commercial managing director Jon Hancock told Insurance Times.

Exclusive deals

“What we’ll do is get personal with them. We have a standard set of products that we will tailor for them. We’ll have facilities, schemes and deals. Deals that we wouldn’t do with our other brokers.”

Hancock cited a £25,000 deal RSA signed on the spot with a broker on the third day of trading at Redhill, which had a soft launch last month.

“It’s really fast, because you know who to come to talk to and they’ve got the skills and capabilities to do it,” he said.

Brokers in the region – spanning Dover, Bournemouth and Watford – can arrange deals by phone and email, as well as meeting trading underwriters in person.

A third of the site has also been set aside for brokers to use as a flexible office space.  

Regional trading centres

RSA plans to open a second trading centre in Leicester in the next six weeks, and a third in Edinburgh by early December. And it is considering setting up more next year.

“We think we’ll write more and better business doing it this way. We think our brokers will place, and we think customers will get a better service,” Hancock added.

Howard Lickens, chief executive of Clear Insurance Management, one of the platinum brokers in the South East, said: “Having a centre of excellence focusing on those brokers is a great idea. It’s extraordinary it hasn’t been done before.”

Broker network

RSA trades with more than 2,500 brokers, but derives about three-quarters of its premium from around 100 platinum brokers across the UK.

The non-platinum brokers can continue to trade with RSA by phone and electronically.

“It’s definitely not ‘and the rest’. We have some really strong telephone trading already, which has been established for years.

“Lots of our brokers tell us that face-to-face trading is not right for their business model. We’re giving those brokers the best service we possibly can through a different model,” Hancock said.

Growth issues?

But Lickens predicted it would be hard for RSA to grow its accounts with non-platinum brokers.

“RSA’s a great brand. If you’re not one of the favoured few brokers, you can’t ignore RSA. But I would have thought it’d be a little hard to grow the rest of the business.

“They’re picking their winners. And, I guess, if people like us don’t deliver, then they’ve got the right to change their winners.”