<p><strong>Speaker 0</strong>: hello and welcome to the first of a series of updates where I&#39;ll be talking to leaders from across the Aviva business about topics that are on the minds of our brokers and customers. My name is Ryan Bebek, broke development director, and I&#39;m joined by Michael Bantu, Mid market managing director. Hi, Michael.</p><p><strong>Speaker 0</strong>: Firstly, can you give us an overview of your role and responsibilities? And secondly, an insight into some of the challenges that you hear our brokers and customers facing into?</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: Yeah, sure, right. And so I lead a team of 550 underwriters across the UK. So our regional branch network, my team, are responsible for working with our broker partners to deliver insurance solutions for customers predominantly UK domiciled up to 250 million turnover.</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: Uh, on the challenges that we see a number of challenges that are facing brokers and customers at the moment. Uh, the inflation environment continues to present challenges driven by you know, many macro factors. Um, and that really puts pressure on insurers and brokers to continue to make sure you know that customers are adequately protected.</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: We&#39;re seeing lots of new and emerging risks. So of that cyber and mobility lots and lots of things that are continuing to change. Rapid advancements in data and technology and climate risks. And what that means from a sustainability perspective for brokers and customers and insurance solutions and the regulatory environment, which continues to put pressure on brokers and insurers to work together to make sure that we&#39;re delivering the best outcomes and the best value for our customers.</p><p><strong>Speaker 0</strong>: It&#39;s clear the brokers are facing into a lot of challenges at the moment, and they&#39;re doing a great job of navigating those. How are we, Aviva helping them</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: do that? Yeah, I think we&#39;re responding really well on on a number of fronts, Really? So you know, first of all, from a customer perspective, you know, we&#39;re really focused on delivering the best outcomes that we can for customers and making sure that they&#39;re adequately protected. We&#39;ve got some cutting edge technology that really helps deploys inside to brokers that allows us to work with them to make sure customers are adequately protected. We&#39;re focused on</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: breadth and quality of our proposition, making sure that we can meet all the needs or as many of the needs of the customers as we can from a service perspective. You know, we know that&#39;s been hugely important for brokers and customers. And really, how do we make sure that we&#39;re delivering the best service, the most consistent service that we can and lastly on the sustainability front? So that&#39;s, you know, about underwriting solutions, practical underwriting solutions and also diversity and inclusion, which is, you know, a huge part of our agenda going forward.</p><p><strong>Speaker 0</strong>: I would get all the points on data and technology and would encourage brokers to use the commercial intelligence tool and the benefits it brings in helping customers get better solutions. Um, you did touch on service. That is a massive area of focus for broad across the industry. Can you tell us about some of the specifics about where you focused and what actions we&#39;ve taken?</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: Yeah, we know. It&#39;s been, um, you know, a huge talking point across the industry, and I think we made some brilliant progress, and we focus fundamentally on three things. Availability, visibility and</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: spons. So whether that&#39;s expanding our branch network and the underwriter footprint that we have and making sure we&#39;ve got better telephony and technology so that people can contact us visibility. So we&#39;re making sure that we are with virtual over the phone or face to face. Um, you know, we&#39;re present with our brokers and our and our customers and from a responsiveness, lots of improvements there. So whether that&#39;s increases in technology, whether that&#39;s improvements in our technical capability giving our brokers and</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: customers access to decision makers, you know, we&#39;ve seen some great outputs of that. 93% of our renewals are now going out 28 days in advance. Um, and more self serve capability. So for the simple straight forward tasks, you know, brokers can undertake them themselves without the need to contact us. So we made some really great improvements. We&#39;re still a long way to go. And we&#39;d love to continue to hear from our brokers around where where they&#39;d like us to focus so we can continue to to drive forward.</p><p><strong>Speaker 0</strong>: I know that you and the team are really focused on this area, and it is great to hear about the improvements, and I can give confidence that you are trying to make things even better, So there&#39;ll be lots more to come</p><p><strong>Speaker 0</strong>: as a final question you did touch on, uh, DE. And I, um, can you talk a little bit about what that means to you and and how you&#39;re using your role to bring that to</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: life? Yeah. So, look, I&#39;m personally hugely passionate, uh, on this subject, and we know that DN I covers many, many different facets, you know, not just gender and ethnicity, which are perhaps some of the more prominent ones that are spoken about. But there&#39;s, you know, many, many areas, and as an industry, we&#39;ve got a long way to go. I think to be truly diverse and</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: inclusive, we made some brilliant progress within Aviva. We&#39;re sort of focused on three things. The first is, you know, through our regional branch network. How do we make continue to make better connections with our brokers, You know, with our customers and with our communities to be more representative, you know, of the areas that we serve, and we want to look for the people that we bring into the organisation. How do we create better talent, pathways and better career progression and</p><p><strong>Speaker 1</strong>: opportunities so the people can progress right the way through the organisation, you know, up to our board and core level, Um, right the way through. And lastly, at the culture that we have within the business, we want people to be comfortable in bringing their whole to work. And that&#39;s really about empathy. It&#39;s about understanding. And it&#39;s about education. So we&#39;re making some brilliant progress. Still, lots more to do. That&#39;s</p><p><strong>Speaker 0</strong>: all we&#39;ve got. Time for today. Michael. Thank you for the update. Thank you.</p>