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Great progress at Ageas UK as it’s named ‘Personal Lines Insurer of the Year’ second time in a row

Interview: Ant Middle, CEO Ageas UK

Having been named British Insurance Awards’ ‘Personal Lines Insurer of the year’ for the second consecutive year, and often cited by brokers for our exclusive focus on personal lines, access to key decision makers, agility and ability to respond quickly, we’re making good progress with our vision to be a leader in personal lines by being smarter, faster and more affordable. 

Great progress at Ageas UK as it’s named ‘Personal Lines Insurer of the Year’ second time in a row

 Having been named British Insurance Awards’ ‘Personal Lines Insurer of the year’ for the second consecutive year, and often cited by brokers for our exclusive focus on personal lines, access to key decision makers, agility and ability to respond quickly, we’re making good progress with our vision to be a leader in personal lines by being smarter, faster and more affordable. 


The successful completion of the sale of our commercial lines front book business earlier in the year provided us with space and freedom to focus exclusively on electronically traded personal lines. With several exciting deals in the growth pipeline that extend our distribution capabilities and put us in an even stronger position in the digital platform space, this focus is paying dividends. 


We have also navigated through a very tough year in terms of the economic environment and one which has challenged the whole industry and, of course, our partners, our people and our customers. Inflation, especially claims inflation, has been a particular challenge for the industry, but add to this political instability, regulatory change, and a number of severe weather events linked to climate change, and the impact has been multiplied. We’re cognisant that the biggest impact of all is on our people and our customers, and there we have tried to deploy many of the lessons learned during the pandemic to ensure we can help people through the current cost of living crisis which is putting such a strain on so many families. From offering additional support to our employees, to providing product flexibility and training our call centre operatives to help them to manage difficult conversations with vulnerable customers, we’re increasing our focus on helping those affected by the current economic climate. 


2022 was also the first year of Impact24, the Group’s three-year strategic plan and here substantial progress has been made against each of the core ambitions set out under that plan. In unlocking the potential in our core business, we have been able to make headway thanks to our decision to focus on personal lines and we are advancing our capabilities to allow us to do that. This includes investing in our technical skills and deploying new technology software at the front end of our business that allows us to unlock all the work that is being done with machine learning and advanced analytics. 

Our ‘technical heroes programme’ – offering award-winning development in technical insurance skills, has continued to gain attraction in 2022, ensuring that our people across every single aspect of the business have the right technical skills. 


With respect to building new Growth Engines, we announced an exciting deal with Amazon UK, becoming one of the first insurers to participate on the new Amazon Insurance Store, offering Home Insurance products. This collaboration allows us to participate directly in new and progressive digital platforms in line with our Impact24 strategy, and it is a real endorsement for our proposition, our technical skills and capabilities and the confidence Amazon has in our service proposition. 


In terms of digital developments, we have also been busy partnering with our broker intermediary network to expand our offering. In the private car space, we have recently partnered with a fully self-service online insurance broker, Yoga Insurance, allowing customers to manage their policies 24/7 from their own chosen device. We have also started work with broker Marmalade on a digital proposition targeted to newly qualified young drivers. Developed by Marmalade and underwritten by Ageas, this product allows drivers to pay specifically for the miles they use their car over a year, tapping into advanced technologies to facilitate this. 

Ant Middle

We’ve made great progress in becoming a leading personal lines insurer in the UK during 2022, underpinned by our sharp focus on customers and strengthening our standout capabilities. This progress reflects the dedication of our people and the continued support of our distribution partners.

Ant Middle, CEO Ageas UK
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The creation of an Advanced Analytics and Data Science Centre of Excellence (COE) in the UK is bringing together critical skills sets including Actuarial Technical Pricing, AI Underwriting and Pricing teams, and Data Scientists within Enterprise Data. This COE provides support to the entire Group and is already showing results. An exciting development is the ability for Ageas to explore in greater depth specific customer profiles, providing new insights that allows us to view risk through a different lens and better intelligence thanks to machine learning. Also in the digital space, new claims journeys were launched in home insurance which allows customers to complete claims online digitally for the first time. 


Sustainability sits at the heart of everything we do, and both internally and externally we are seeing this increasingly baked into our daily lives and the way we think and function as a business. To enhance transparency of our approach, Ageas UK published its first sustainability report. We were also one of the first signatories to Flood Re’s Build Back Better initiative which gives homeowners the opportunity to have flood resilience and resistant measures installed by their insurer in the event of flood damage. This takes the traditional concept of home insurance a step further into the preventative space – putting in place measures that make homes ore flood resistant. 


Ageas UK’s Green Parts initiative has continued to develop with 25% of the motor supply chain sourced through green parts. Not only is this environmentally highly effective, but customers are also able to get back on the road more quickly, especially in the current climate where access to parts has been affected by the macro environmental issues. 


For the future, with Impact24 firmly in place, the mantra will be “sharper focus, better results”. We will continue to apply our sharp focus on growing in the personal lines market while investing heavily in the capabilities that we know will make us stand out in the market. This includes our technical capabilities – underwriting and pricing and claims and fraud management, where we’re making good progress in becoming top quartile. It also includes technology, as we transform our infrastructure through the biggest investment, we have ever made in transitioning our core platforms towards a new digital platform meaning, among other things, customers will be able to interact with us more easily and more quickly through a range of digital touch points. We will continue to deliver excellence in our data and analytics to provide informed insight that underpins every decision we make, and we will maintain a sharp focus on being low cost to ultimately make our proposition more competitive and affordable for our customers. It’s about delivering what customers want from their provider, and that’s what we will deliver in the future.