Zurich ‘in force’ at Biba conference, with capacity deals on the horizon – David Nichols
05/09/2025
David Nichols, UK head of retail at Zurich, looks to grasp the opportunities of e-trade, highlights a “few more” capacity deals in the pipeline, and shares his key message for brokers ahead of the British Insurance Brokers’ Association conference next week.
Zurich is working through a number of capacity deals at the moment, and plans to announce the next one later this month.
Further capacity deals sit in two areas, Nichols, pictured, detailed. The first being an extension of existing partnerships, looking at how Zurich can work collaboratively to broaden out what it does within them.
“In addition, brand new arrangements where we’ve found a partner that shares the same ethos, capability and technical attributes to us,” he stated.
Last year, Insurance Age revealed Zurich had signed a five-year capacity deal with managing general agent Freedom Services that saw both re-enter telematics. The MGA announced earlier this year it is widening its distribution footprint and rolling out new arrangements over the coming months.
Zurich kickstarted 2025 signing a multi-year deal with MGA Iprism, bringing in capacity for property owners and commercial combined products.
In March, Zurich UK extended its capacity agreement with Plum Underwriting for a further five years, with ambitions to reach £250m GWP over the term.
Each of those partnerships was carefully considered, said Nichols.
“We make decisions and execute on them quickly, that’s a core part of the proposition we take to partners. What’s so important to us in choosing those partnerships is the ethos of them, their focus on customers and the capability they demonstrate as a partnership. “In each of those examples, the underwriting capability, their knowledge of the market, it is a phenomenal capability that the partner brings to us. I like to think of it as very additive to what we do.”
E-trade
Nichols sees the historic boundaries between SME e-trade and case underwritten mid-market continuing to blur.
“Increasingly it’s an opportunity for us to perhaps lose the tag of SME or mid-market or something else, because all insurers class it as something slightly different. And I don’t think that’s particularly helpful from a broker perspective.
“It’s better to be able to talk about how you access this through an e-trade portal. If it’s case underwritten, we’ll case underwrite and push it back through your portal. If it’s e-trade we’ll return a price immediately.
“That’s a really powerful proposition. That’s a huge part of the opportunity that e-trade brings, giving brokers a more streamlined ability to place a piece of business electronically, even if we do need to case underwrite it. That’s certainly a journey that we continue to push within Zurich.”
Confidence
Different comfort levels of e-trading by brokers are based on the maturity of the product, Nichols explained.
“For packaged products, generally speaking, there’s a lot of confidence between brokers and insurers about what you can and can’t do. When you get into some of the commercial combined products, that becomes a slightly more challenged placement decision because actually it can be quite a complex product that’s traded electronically.”
Zurich has run a series of training seminars with its brokers and had SME underwriters go into some of its core broker hubs when it comes to SME.
Nichols stated: “We’ve talked to them about our product and about how we look at different things. We have spent time unpacking what they’ve quoted on but then haven’t placed on e-trade. So all of those things are about building confidence in the fact that the brokers got it right, what they’ve put in is correct, and they should feel confident in binding it on their e-trade platform.”
Products
Zurich continually reviews the products it has on e-trade, Nichols said, with product formation coming in two areas: “One supports some standalone digital capability with our key distribution partners, and we’ve been delighted with the Bravo Network trading that we’ve been a key part of. I think that’s a really good example of how e-trading can develop in the future.
“And in addition, it will be about products. We’re looking at some of our small fleet capability, and later this year we’ll see a number of enhancements in that particular area.”
Service
Last year, Zurich received 50,000 broker surveys, giving it a plus 77 TNPS score. This year it sits at plus 81 so far.
“We pore over every single one of those, because actually it’s not just about getting a good score, it’s about all the verbatim comments underpinning that allow us to keep shaping and changing our proposition.
“The feedback is what drives how we develop, and I think you can see it in the way we’ve enhanced our e-trade capabilities in the last 12 months.
“Fast referral processes, pre-screening out certain aspects of how we trade with brokers in the e-trade environment, and then even as fundamental as the proposition changes that we’ve made in high net worth. All of that is based on the broker feedback that we’ve received.”
Zurich continues to focus on and invest in its service metrics, with 100,000 hours of training and 500 underwriting licence progressions in the last 12 months.
Magic Breakfast
For every piece of TNPS feedback Zurich gets, it donates breakfast to a child through its partnership with charity Magic Breakfast.
“We’ve added more areas of our business to it. We did it as part of our retail proposition last year, we’ve now added it into our claims proposition as well.”
Response times
In the e-trade environment “speed is of the essence”. According to Nichols, anything that’s actively referred into the SME team on the platform is typically dealt with within a 30-minute window.
He added: “Then 70% of our live chats, which is a core area of support for brokers, are dealt with within 60 seconds.
“Live chat is a really important part of proposition. It means the broker can have a real-time conversation responded to from underwriters on our side, and also they don’t have to be distracted with looking at other things. They can key in their question, they’ve got the response there. They can still spend time with a customer. They don’t even have to leave the customer journey that they’re on.”
One team
During 2024, Zurich consolidated its commercial and retail distribution teams aiming to make trading with brokers easier. The reception to this change has been very positive, Nichols assessed.
“It’s about making sure we’ve got the right relationship structure in place to help brokers access the skills and the capabilities that we have,” he commented. “And that was a fundamental driver behind bringing the distribution teams together. So far, I’m really pleased with how it’s working.
“Of course, it means that a relationship lead has had to extend the boundaries of their product knowledge and their area of the business, because they are representing all aspects when they go and sit with a broker. But that’s meaningful for the individual in that distribution team as well, because it’s adding to their skill set and their capabilities.”
Regions
There are no plans for more offices on the horizon, with Zurich happy with the coverage it has, however Nichols remarked that is “not a firm no”.
“If we saw an opportunity emerge, we would absolutely pursue it because that proximity to our broker communities is such a fundamental part of our proposition.”
Nichols explained 99% of Zurich’s UK authority, when it comes to underwriting, sits in each of its branches, meaning brokers don’t have to go through referral routes.
“They [underwriters] can make the decision in that office there and then.
“If we do open up more offices, we want them to [operate] in exactly the same way, because I don’t think there’s any value in a sort of window office that doesn’t have any substance behind it.
“For me, you have to do it properly, and that means having properly qualified underwriters that can make decisions in the region, working with that community of brokers.”
Network trading
Insurance Age revealed last week that Zurich is building a mid-market business servicing centre for network members to go live in the third quarter.
Nichols said: “We put all of our propositions together, so telephone account manager to support the relationship with those network members, SME and mid-market underwriters, having them as a coherent team that is only in place to support our networks. It means that we can develop very specific service propositions for network members.”
SME
UK property and casualty gross written premium ticked up 4% to £3.88bn in 2024 at Zurich, around 45% of which was made up of retail, including personal lines, high net worth, SME and mid-market, said Nichols.
Last year, Zurich achieved 30% SME growth in new business, with similar targets for 2025, UK head of SME and trading Nikki Lidster revealed at the end of 2024.
The insurer is already at 25% at the end of Q1, and Nichols observed: “We’re continuing to double down in that particular area because it’s good quality business.
“We continue to invest heavily in our digital capability in SME because we recognise it’s thinner-margin stuff from a broker point of view. So we need to make the trading journey as easy as possible and create as little waste as possible from a broker perspective.”
Mid-market
Zurich is targeting the mid-market space, with Morgan Lyons, head of mid-market, looking to become “a bit of a nuisance” to the competition. And competition it has aplenty, with Axa UK boss Tara Foley telling Insurance Age last year the insurer was looking to enter the white space between Axa and Axa XL.
Allianz is also targeting growth in the mid-market space as UK CEO Colm Holmes promised to ramp up focus last year.
In response, Nichols cited Zurich’s longevity in mid-market and sees growth opportunities across the board.
“We start from a really strong base. We have really strong technical underwriting capabilities in each of our regional offices, and they have the authority they need to trade in their local footprint.”
Blended
In October, Nichols explained blending mid-market and SME to create a seamless experience for its broker partners is a key priority for Zurich.
“We started by looking at the cases that were submitted via e-trade that were not capable of being e-traded, and we said ‘what does that look like? What’s the customer base in that particular area? And how do we create a proposition to support those customers without the broker having to intervene’.
“We started by taking subsets of those and dropping them into our regional case underwritten proposition, and that has been the first stage of blending.”
Nichols continued: “Work is progressing quite nicely on that becoming even more seamless from a broker point of view, so that actually they can submit it on their Acturis platform. We will keep it in that platform, and we will respond on that platform even for case underwritten business.”
Biba
As for his key message for brokers ahead of Biba’s 2025 conference next week, he concluded: “Please do stop by and see us. Please do tell us what you think, we’re here for good and bad feedback. It will be a pleasure to welcome as many as we possibly can to our stand.
“We are there in force, and we’re there to listen.”
