How Aviva is supporting your digital ambitions in 2021 and beyond

Authored by Aviva

2021 has been a turbulent year. As we continue to adapt to new ways of working, we’ve seen strong headwinds with challenging economic and market conditions.

To help support you and your business, we’ve been investing. Not just in our people, but in our digital infrastructure – from Fast Trade and eTrade improvements through to systems, processes and automations.

In this article, we sit down with David Hockey, Jason Chambers and Maria Crockart to discuss the progress made in 2021, and what you can expect from Aviva in 2022 and beyond.

Making it easier to trade online

“As we adapt to new ways of working in an ever-evolving digital world, we’ve seen the emphasis on online trading grow. Digital trading provides huge efficiency benefits, and the ability to manage and amend business online is increasingly important.

A key focus for us this year has been expanding our online product portfolio to help you place business that’s typically been difficult to do so online.

We’ve had a clear strategy to enhance our Specialty Lines business, and we’ve launched a new standalone Cyber solution on both Fast Trade and Acturis eTrade, as well as refreshing our Management Liability product. This is part of a long-term commitment from Aviva to invest in Specialty Lines business, and you can expect more in this space next year.

In addition to expanding our online proposition, we’ve also made a number of enhancements and improvements to our core offering, including Minifleet, Property Owners and Commercial Combined.

The changes we’re making now, and will continue to make next year, help to stretch the boundaries of the breadth of business that can be digitally traded. Our ambition is to provide the capability for you to place more and more through digital channels. You’ll start to see more of this in 2022, especially on Commercial Combined as we seek to widen our digital product offering and integrate a more seamless proposition across online and offline business.

Finally, we understand how important it is for consistency. We’ve made solid progress this year to mature our digital strategy to align the experience of trading online, whether that’s via our Five Star rated Fast Trade platform*, or Acturis eTrade.”

David Hockey, Head of SME Trading

Using data and automation to free up underwriting time, improve efficiencies and put you in control

“Throughout this year, we’ve been using data, automation, and artificial intelligence to help shape deliveries that give you more control, improve efficiencies where appropriate and free up valuable underwriting time.

To support your cross-sell and up-sell ambitions, we started to deliver additional quotes for core Specialty Lines covers. Delivered automatically into e-Documents ahead of renewal, these PDFs contain up to five quotes relevant to the client, where we believe the cover is appropriate. Assuming our assumptions are correct, this business can be placed without needing to ask any additional questions.

Since April, we’ve generated 32,000 PDFs, quoting for close to 150,000 extra covers. Log in to Aviva Broker today and head to e-Documents to discover your cross-sell opportunities – watch the demo video here to discover what information the documents contain and where you can find them.

Following on from the pandemic, we know that underinsurance for businesses is more of a problem than ever with many businesses not updating cover in-line with the changes they’ve made to their business models.

To continue to try and tackle underinsurance, our underwriters are empowered to provide data-driven insights through our Commercial Intelligence Tool (CIT). By using the data and intelligence  available through CIT, we are able to quickly identify buildings with potential underinsurance, assets which haven’t been reviewed for a number of years, inadequate levels of Business Interruption (BI) cover or other potential gaps for your clients.

Working together with you, the insights shared not only help to support your growth ambitions but provide your client the information they need to make an informed decision on the cover suitable for their business.

Looking forward to 2022, we’ll continue to invest more into tools to make doing business with us easier than ever. You can expect faster renewal processes, more control to manage business online and further enhancements with how we use data to improve our overall service and operational model.

Jason Chambers, Head of Automation

Looking ahead to 2022 and beyond

“This year has seen just as many, if not more challenges than previous years, but I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve achieved to help you and your clients.

As David has outlined, we’ve continued to develop our capabilities on our digital propositions throughout 2021. I’m thrilled of the recognition this has been rewarded with Fast Trade being awarded the only Five Star extranet in the market this year*, and with our overall eTrade proposition winning ‘Excellence in eTrading’ at the Insurance Times awards.

Whilst we are continuing to develop digitally and giving you more opportunities to self-serve, we understand the importance of having someone there to help you when you need it.

Investment has been made across this year in building further capability and capacity – not just in head count, but also in the development of those excellent people currently supporting our Digital proposition. Yes, we have an ambition to digitise more of our business, but rest assured you will continue to be supported by fantastic underwriters when you need them.

Moving forward, we will continue to dial up the complexity of our online product offering, stretching the limits of what digital trading can offer to allow you to start and finish more business online.

However, our digital proposition isn’t just trading.

We’re making significant advancements with data and automation to make it easier for you to manage business with Aviva, while freeing up our underwriters to focus on those more complex cases that require their attention and expertise.

Our digital risk management proposition continues to evolve, and the Aviva Risk Solutions website continues to be a focal hub for guidance and support on managing common risks businesses face.

I’m truly excited for 2022 and beyond. We have some exciting deliveries in the pipeline across our digital proposition and I look forward to seeing the fulfilment of this hard work in the New Year.

Finally, I want to say thank you.

It’s been a challenging year. The hard market has presented placement challenges and looks as though it will extend into next year – and our recent Risk Insights report highlights there’s additional complexities on the horizon for businesses next year.

I know that you will be feeling the strain of these challenges as much as we do, so we are doing everything we can to make it easier for you. Our underwriters will continue to be here to support you, whether it is on or offline and we will continue to look back over our performance to help us move forward together.”

Maria Crockart – Digital Trading and Automation Director