Irish Broker Article: A conversation with Julie Frazer, Aviva’s Personal Lines Product & Underwriting Lead

Like many of my industry colleagues, my career in insurance was not exactly intentional. I studied Film & Television in college, assuming that I would someday become the next Steven Spielberg. I took a receptionist role in an insurance brokerage just to pay the bills while I waited for Hollywood to call, and the rest is history! I guess I decided insurance could be as exciting as making movies!!

That was over 22 years ago and since then I’ve had various roles in the general insurance industry, cutting my teeth with insurance brokers for three years, followed by a 13-year stint in an MGA, before finally moving to an insurer in 2016.

What’s your role in Aviva?

I joined Aviva in February 2022 to take up the role of Personal Lines Product & Underwriting Lead. I’m responsible for our Personal Lines product offerings across all channels, and my key areas of focus are Underwriting strategy, Risk appetite, Product development, Proposition management and Underwriting governance.

During my first week, I attended an internal conference in the Aviva Stadium where our CEO and the senior leadership team spoke passionately about delivering sustainable growth across all areas of the business and one of the overriding callouts for achieving this was Broker centricity. It became very clear on that day what my key objectives should be – to ensure empowerment of our broker support team, listening to our brokers, improving the service proposition, delivering stronger, market leading product offerings for both Home and Motor as well as widening our risk appetite.

What are your key highlights since joining Aviva?

It’s been a whirlwind first year with lots of opportunity for our Personal Lines teams to deliver on some key initiatives in line with Aviva’s strategy. From a development perspective, we integrated our Cartell enrichment data into our Motor renewal solution on the Applied platform in September and we’ve already seen an increase in retention as a result. We’ve also kicked off our Home Renewal Full Cycle EDI project which, once implemented, will create significant efficiencies for our brokers.

On the service front, we’ve sanctioned increased underwriting authorities at all levels within our broker support team ensuring more efficient responses and flexibility. We’ve also moved away from requiring our brokers to retain original hard copies of documents, including No Claims Bonuses in recognition of the progress insurers are making towards e-Docs. As for widening our risk appetite, we launched our High Net Worth offering via DUAL in January 2022 and will shortly onboard another book of High-Net-Worth business, cementing our intent to continue to grow this business further.

By far the biggest piece of work we completed in 2022 was a full review and refresh of the Broker Home policy wording. We incorporated feedback from many areas internally, including our Complaints and Claims teams, and engaged with some of our brokers to obtain their insights too, ensuring a holistic approach. I’m proud to say this new policy wording launched on 1 January 2023.

What are the main enhancements to the Aviva Home Product?

On our Contents cover, we’ve extended our definition for Home Office Equipment to take account of the new working from home/hybrid working environment. We’re also providing cover for ride-on mowers as standard. New benefits have also been added for student’s possessions and new baby contents cover. In addition, ‘contents in the open’ now includes bicycles, each up to €1,000 in value.

In terms of Buildings cover, we’ve added some new benefits like cover for EV charging points, fixed hot tubs / outdoor spas. We’re also providing liability cover where members of the household are working from home. We have also increased the limits that apply to five of our existing benefits – Credit cards, Fire brigade charges, Frozen food, Door locks and Death benefit.

Overall, we’re confident that we now offer a best-in-class Home product and look forward to seeing that translate into profitable growth for both our brokers and Aviva.

Home Underinsurance – it’s a hot topic currently. What are your thoughts?

Working in the insurance industry we’re all acutely aware of the risks of underinsurance for the consumer and how significantly this risk has increased over the last 12 months due to rising inflation and other global factors. However, I’m not sure this awareness has manifested amongst general consumers and that’s of great concern to us.

We, like most home insurers and Brokers, advise customers to refer to the Society of Chartered Surveyors’ house rebuild calculator to make sure the sums insured figure they choose is accurate. The SCSI released new rebuild rates in October 2022 that were significantly higher than the previous rates and yet we were not seeing a step change in the number of customers increasing their sums insured. That suggests that customers may not be utilising the SCSI calculator as often as we may have assumed or expected to ensure they are adequately covered.

In December we began writing to all customers to highlight the risk of underinsurance and the possible consequences in the event of a claim and to encourage them to review their sums insured as a matter of urgency. We really hope this will resonate with customers and they’ll take the necessary action to protect themselves from underinsurance going forward.

Plans for 2023 and beyond…

There’s plenty more to come from Aviva’s Personal Lines Teams in 2023 and beyond – some of the highlights of what we have in store include:

• A full Motor policy wording refresh to ensure a best-in-class proposition
• Pricing sophistication initiatives to enhance our competitiveness
• Further widening of our appetite in Personal Lines
• More service improvements and efficiencies in our Broker channel

Brokers are our largest distribution channel, and we are focused on growing our business and making it as easy as possible for you to do business with Aviva. Please get in touch with myself or any of my team for support and we look forward to working with you.

HomeChoice policy details are available on avivabroker.ie.
Underwriting criteria, terms and conditions apply.