A new lens and an eye for opportunity

With a laser like focus on growth, Zurich retail boss David Nichols is keen to bring a new lens to the insurer’s offering and deliver for brokers.

Published in Insurance Age by Emmanuel Kenning | 9 May 2023

Zurich’s UK Head of Retail David Nichols, speaking in his first interview since taking on the job at the start of the year, says: “We could do more is the thing that really excites me.”

Keen to praise the achievements of his predecessor David Martin, who stepped down in October to head over to Aviva, Nichols acknowledges the “tremendous” progress in the retail division to build a strong platform, but is eager for even more growth. This is all in keeping with his mantra of continuous improvement. “There is an opportunity out there for us to do things slightly differently to find a different way of increasing our trading relationships, and that’s the bit that I’m really focused on,” he sums up.

In his first few months in the role Nichols has spent a lot of time talking to brokers. “I consistently hear ‘we like working with you, you have great people, it is a pleasure to work with you, but we could do more’. I’m interested in that ‘we could do more’ because that for me is the opportunity that we need to turn on,” he explains.

In Nichols’ view there is “no question” Zurich has grown “really well” in areas it was underweight in “but the growth ambition doesn’t disappear because of that”. He underlines: “We absolutely should be poised for bigger shares of wallet with our broker population that we serve.”

New branches

This year, Zurich has already opened branches in Bristol and Leeds as well as adding underwriting expertise in Southampton. “We are regionally well placed and we are not stopping. Having a regional trading relationship is really important,” he assesses.

Adding mid-market underwriting capability in London makes “a lot of sense” and could well be the next investment, he suggests. “We will be standing back, looking at our distribution landscape, and saying where else geographically does it make sense for us to introduce an office with trading capability?” Nichols commits.

The second string to the expansion bow will also help in the mid-market space. “We are poised to go live with a refreshed proposition this year, which will benefit massively in the lower mid-market sector, and which I can say we’re underweight in right now,” Nichols states.

The insurer has invested in behind-the-scenes technology for its digital platform alongside a mid-market simplification exercise with a modularised product. “The bulk of the new proposition that will go live this year is in the commercial combined product, e-traded and digitally supported,” he reveals. “It is about reducing the complexity of the policy offering that we have.”

Brokers will not see new screens or have to go through any rekeying, he confirms: “This will be really simple from a broker point of view. We do not want to be getting in the way.”

Once emailed propositions reach Zurich they will be digitally loaded, enriched and worked on by underwriters. What brokers will see is a “refreshed product wording”, which can be delivered digitally on the same day in a manner that cannot currently be done. And in keeping with the growth agenda: “They’ll see a revised appetite in the lower mid-market space. If I look at our regional footprint, I’d say that we’re brilliant in the mid-market. Perhaps we don’t go as far as we could in the lower mid-market sector at the moment. And this will give us an entry point that currently doesn’t exist.”  

The commercial world

Having got his feet into the commercial world, Nichols says he recognised Zurich had a “really strong” proposition through its brand and commitment to e-trading, particularly the extranet. “It goes back to my desire for continuous improvement,” he says of the “good logical step”. “I also relished the opportunity to own the profit and loss element of a particular account, which moving to Zurich gave me. The role I left behind at Aviva was largely operational delivery.”

He ran four SME centres, in Cheltenham, Sutton, Birmingham and Belfast, with micro accounts for shop, pub, restaurant, hotel, office and small property owners on the extranet and via phone quotes. “The majority of it was e-trade, it was a really effective platform for its time.”

Three years later and the mantra was to the fore again with the new job of director of technical operations for general insurance. “That was looking at continuous improvement opportunities in particular,” Nichols explains, listing shared services and market facing elements among the equation.

Broking and claims

It was to hold him in good stead when he jumped the fence five years later to broking, a pivotal piece of the journey to his current post and a key factor in his belief of being able to deliver for brokers. Being chief operating officer at Endsleigh meant looking after the sales, service and claims centres, as well as the IT delivery. “There were so many learning points,” Nichols recalls, pinpointing managing margin on the insurance transaction and making sure that leads were generating income as being high on the list.

He also spent nearly two years at the then Zurich-owned student insurance specialist as customer operations director. Part of the equation was making sure staff were “really focused on delighting the customer”. Nichols says: “I explored everything about the broker insurer relationships at that particular time.”
It was at Endsleigh that he had his first taste of leading a business. For five months in 2015, he was interim managing director after the departure of Tim Holliday. Nichols always knew it would be a temporary assignment and says due to having “fantastic people around the table” it wasn’t a difficult transition to make.

With continuous improvement running like a vein through his career, after returning to Zurich a little later as UKGI COO in 2016 the focus involved procurement, premises and quite heavily featured automation. After which came the new lens: claims. The first attraction of becoming UK chief claims officer in 2017 was he recognised claims as “a moment of truth” for the product. “Secondly, I saw huge opportunities to do things slightly differently,” he suggests.

At the time all claims were being handled in a similar way. “It was an opportunity create a fast flow around lower value claims, less touch points, faster closure out to customers when they need it, and then a real concentration on the technical skills where you can really help a customer in the major space. That didn’t exist before.” Adding: “We put more consistency around how we did it. We really did break some ground by enriching the handling capability with digital and data.”

Nichols’ claims knowledge – he believes – will now enhance the brokers’ end-to-end experience with Zurich. “The claim stint has allowed me to come into retail, and perhaps look at what we do through a slightly different perspective. Of course, it’s about the quality of the underwriting, the speed at which we can service brokers, our authenticity, competitiveness and cover proposition in the market. “But I will hang onto that lens of we’re selling policies for a purpose. I don’t think I will ever leave that heritage behind. I look at it through perhaps a slightly different lens having had that experience in claims.”

One perspective that will not be lost when using these skills is the importance of the quest being for profitable growth.

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