Aviva has redesigned its approach for midmarket clients, investing in its technology and specialist partner network to open up corporate-level services and customer-level underwriting to the midmarket segment for the first time.
The UK’s midmarket businesses, which Aviva defines as between £5m and £100m annual turnover, were described as the country’s economic engine in a BDO report last year, contributing one third of private sector GDP and jobs, despite accounting for less than one per cent of all companies.1
Midmarket optimism
According to another report by Natwest, optimism is high among midmarket business owners with more than two-thirds projecting an increase in revenue over the next 12 months.2
However Gareth Hemming, Director of SME Commercial Lines at Aviva, said midmarket businesses struggled to access the right risk management expertise and insight to manage this growth, as well as existing and emerging risks.
Too large for government initiatives and too small to employ full-time risk managers, midmarket businesses are often left stuck in the middle.
To address these issues, we are taking a big business approach to midmarket, offering personalised advice, business insights based on sophisticated data analytics and access to innovative technology. Traditionally these sorts of services have only been available to large companies.
Drawing on multiple internal and external data sources, Aviva has assessed the insurance and wider business needs of midmarket companies to offer an integrated insurance and risk prevention solution across eight industry sectors:
- professional and business services
- industrial and manufacturing
- real estate and construction
- arts and culture
- technology
- retail and wholesale
- health and public sector
- the motor industry
Now, through data analytics, Aviva can pinpoint what risks a customer might be particularly vulnerable to, as well as identifying their wider insurance needs.
“We can now underwrite from a customer level, rather than selling individual products” Mr Hemming said.
Offering specialist tools
Aviva has also built a suite of products and services through a network of more than 40 specialist partners, offering tools from online reputational monitoring, aerial inspections using drones and leak detection technology, to health and safety training and connected technology for manual handling.
We can now offer our brokers and customers access to innovative tools to assess risks to virtual or real assets, or to help them in times of crisis,” Mr Hemming said.
What’s more, many of these services have been specially tailored to the midmarket segment for Aviva, having previously only been available to larger corporations.
David Carey, who joined Aviva last year as the new Head of Midmarket, is leading the delivery of the new strategy, which includes a dedicated midmarket Client Relationship Management team working closely with Aviva’s regional teams.
The CRM team is fully focused on working with brokers to understand midmarket customers’ businesses and co-ordinate all parts of the Aviva service proposition, from underwriting and claims to risk consultancy and seminars working closely with existing Regional offices.
David Carey said: “Midmarket businesses want peace of mind, customisation, superior service, forward thinking and partnership. Aviva has the footprint to bring this proposition to every corner of the country and offer added value and expertise in our eight industry segments.”
-ENDS-
1https://www.bdo.co.uk/en-gb/news/2018/economic-engine-mid-sized-businesses-outperform-rest-of-uk-plc
2https://natwest.contentlive.co.uk/content/midmarket-britain-2018
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Notes to editors:
- We are the UK's leading diversified insurer and we operate in the UK, Ireland and Canada. We also have international investments in India and China.
- We help our 19.6 million (as at 31 August 2024) customers make the most out of life, plan for the future, and have the confidence that if things go wrong we’ll be there to put it right.
- We have been taking care of people for more than 325 years, in line with our purpose of being ‘with you today, for a better tomorrow’. In 2023, we paid £25.6 billion in claims and benefits to our customers.
- In 2021, we announced our ambition to become Net Zero by 2040, the first major insurance company in the world to do so. We are aiming to have Net Zero carbon emissions from Aviva’s operations and supply chain by 2030. While we are working towards our sustainability ambitions, we recognise that while we have control over Aviva’s operations and influence on our supply chain, when it comes to decarbonising the economy in which we operate and invest, Aviva is one part of a far larger global ecosystem. There are also limits to our ability to influence other organisations and governments. Nevertheless, we remain focused on the task and are committed to playing our part in the collective effort to enable the global transition. Find out more about our climate goals at at www.aviva.com/sustainability/climate and our sustainability ambition and action at www.aviva.com/sustainability.
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