Information about NIG and FarmWeb joining RSA
Last updated: 29 October 2024
Please bookmark or save this page to your favourites to refer back to. We will regularly update these FAQs over the coming months.
Summary of the deal
This transformational journey enables us to develop a Commercial Lines operation in the UK that is geared to outperform in terms of service, profitability and growth.
It complements the existing distribution footprint of both companies and provides a core platform to provide improved service and deliver better products to brokers and customers in the future.
As a result, we’ll become the third largest Commercial Lines insurer in the UK with approximately 7% market share by annual GWP, with a combined ratio in the low 90s in the medium-term.
Principles of the integration
We will integrate in the best way that ensures service continuity and protects your business during the transfer, while prioritising speed of delivery.
To achieve our program principles and to provide a good experience for you and your customers, we are using a ‘lift and shift’ approach, which means the first objective is to separate the NIG and FarmWeb broker business from Direct Line Group (DLG) and maintain the products and systems.
Our ambition in the near-term is to merge our products, pricing, service, and value proposition into one. More information will follow on this later in 2024.
We are excited about the future; the opportunities it presents for our business, our customers and our colleagues, and we’re always keen to hear from you. We’ll provide regular updates on the Q&A pages of both the RSA and NIG websites, so please do let us know your questions and any concerns so we can ensure you have the answers you need.
We plan to phase the migration of customers over several months, depending on product, channel or tech requirements. From mid-June about 20% of the NIG book started to migrate, predominantly delegated schemes and some Legacy manually written products.
From 15 July 2024, e-traded business on Acturis, other software house mid-market business, the online schemes book and all policies with an effective date of 2 September 2024 started to migrate.
The CV business which is written via CDL will migrate on 30 September 2024.
You have been provided with a schedule that clearly maps out those effective dates for renewal and new business and at what point they will start to be written by RSA. If you haven’t received this, you can download here.
There are a small number of policies that sit outside of that timeline and will migrate to a different timeline. We will contact you, provide a full policy listing, and help signpost exactly what the process is for those customers. We want to ensure there is minimal disruption to customer service as we move the business across.
We’d love our teams to be co-located and working side by side as soon as possible. Creating and embedding the culture of the new organisation is fundamental to our future success.
Our regional footprint, which has always been fundamental to our strong broker relationships, will remain unchanged, and we will continue to have a strong presence across all key locations.
Our focus is, and will continue to be, to empower our regions by giving them local underwriting authority. This ensures that our decision-making is not only as quick as you need it to be but also as close to the customer as possible.
NIG’s underwriting appetite remains in place on our core products. We’re committed to bring one product and one price to market next year but currently there are no plans to change appetite in the short term.
We will not quote on business written by NIG. New business presentations which clearly state NIG as the holding insurer will be declined, and you will receive an email confirmation of this.
While we anticipate the instances of this to be rare, we have established an internal process for those cases in the Upper Mid-Market where we will manage follow-lines/cumulative capacity across RSA and NIG on single risks.
Our underwriting teams will collaborate to find the best way forward for you and your customer.
Please continue to send the enquiries to either business or both as you would have always done. In a non-e-trade environment, we will triage in-house and determine locally who and how we will respond.
The process will improve as we move towards our future operating model of one system, one product, one value proposition to market.
We are working towards a single account plan and Account Manager for all our partners.
For SME/e-trade existing business held by NIG and FarmWeb, the high-volume nature of this business means we will continue to quote on NIG and FarmWeb business (and vice versa) until the integration is complete.
For Delegated business, it is less likely that we will both be quoting on individual MGAs/schemes, but customers have the right to choose the wording and terms that suit their needs.
FarmWeb remains a standalone division, with its own brand and products operating on the Acturis system, which is bespoke to the FarmWeb business.
The underwriting will continue to be managed by FarmWeb underwriters. But as of September 2024 it will debit into the RSA background environment.
You will see from September your policies will look and feel the same, but the underwriting entity will change. Instead of saying UKI Limited, it will say "underwritten by RSA".
Each arrangement will be considered on its own merit. In these situations, they will be considered by the RSA leadership team for a prompt decision.
We're already working hard to bring everything together internally; we are coordinating our approach with regards to individual quotes on individual risks.
Please continue to send your enquiries through the channels you have always used in the past as we will triage internally and respond accordingly.
Policy numbers will not change, and they will transfer across. However we will add a prefix to help us identify and ring-fence existing and new business.
If you need to speak with us, please make a note of the policy inception date and link it to our migration timeline to help you easily navigate the options in our phone system. Our IVR process will route you to the correct team depending on the inception date.
This isn't necessarily a typical straight-forward acquisition of a discrete business. We bought an asset of DLG, so much of the work that we've had to tackle in the first year has been in relation to the segregation of the business from DLG.
By early summer, we will successfully migrate the business and customers, then work to migrate data and systems over to RSA.
For claims, the process is slightly longer and will take us further into 2025 to achieve.
We don't want to be operating as two separate trading companies. We are working hard on how we harmonise our combined product sets and our rating tools. We want to be in a position to offer one best-in-class product under one price underpinned by one TOBA as soon as we possibly can.
We will not compete on held business. If you submit a held risk to RSA, as a new business enquiry, we will not quote. We'll explain that to you as and when the situation arises.
The recent purchase of NIG positions RSA Commercial Lines as a lead insurer in the Regional/Mid-Market space.
RSA Speciality Lines UK and RSA Speciality Lines Europe will continue to operate under our Global Specialty Lines, where we pursue our strategic roadmap in line with Intact’s Global Speciality Lines plan. This gives brokers and customers who require a Specialty solution, access to a far broader set of capabilities and expertise at RSA.
We find that one of our weaknesses in large corporate business in the regions is that sometimes the coordination isn't what it should be from a broker experience point of view.
Therefore, we've appointed Steve Salter as the Regional Trading Director for large corporate business, and he will pull together all the coordination aspects to create a seamless proposition service to Brokers.
We know that it currently doesn't work how we want it to work, and we certainly know it doesn't work if we want to outperform in that segment.
The idea of that appointment is to improve service. We know it's business we like, we have a strong position in that upper mid-market space, and we want to continue that.
We want to grow it but equally we want to grow the small Mid-Market space as well.
We're looking to improve the service proposition of the manually underwritten smaller business and will be heavily investing in technology to support this.
The first drop of migrating packages policies is in June, but you won't notice a massive difference for a month or two as that settles.
In Q3, you should see an improvement in the trading performance in the packages area, and then we'll build on further product sets. But certainly by the end of the year that's an area of strength that we expect to emerge.
We will ensure our sales teams are armed with all the information to help support you through these changes. We have multiple routes for escalation and will equip each regional trading site with a clear list of contacts to share with you.
The priority right now is to separate the asset from the DLG family. We aim to transfer it smoothly into the RSA world with minimum disruption as soon as possible.
We are carefully examining every single decision. This includes the processes and the systems that we are employing to do exactly that. But we're in a cyclical business and what happens with the combination of these two coming together is we've got a much richer product and data set.
There will be a continual focus on the performance of our portfolios, both good and bad, to look at emerging trends and this will evolve as part of our BAU in the months to come.
To give some specific examples:
We have a Funeral Director scheme that looks at both the motor and the non-motor risks
We have a Charity scheme which is a package product, so Property, Liability and also some Financial Lines
We have a scheme that targets the early years setting, so child minders and nurseries
These schemes are often packaged products but, as you can see from those 3 examples, they're all targeted at specific customer groups.
No one partner looks exactly like the others. Some partners have worked with us at the start on product development. Then, once we've built a product, they are happy to work within a set of rules that we govern. Other partners have sophisticated underwriting capability, and therefore the nature of delegation to them is a little bit broader to make use of those skills, in order to give the customer the best service that we can.
RSA doesn’t currently have a Motor Trade product, so it is very much focused on what we offer currently in the space.
Motor Trade covers everything from a small Motor Trade Repairer or Car Sales Outlet, all the way up to some of the largest Dealership Propositions we've got in the UK.
We continually look at policy wordings and scan the market for the best ones, then work out where we should be positioning ourselves. But we have no plans to change what we're doing in Motor Trade at the moment.
We offer a wide spectrum in terms of what we do in Motor Trade.
We offer Broker Partnership Agreements right across the agency base that we have. They take different forms. Each one is bespoke to the individual broker and there are no plans to change our offering around Broker Partnership Agreements.
Both brands will continue to operate alongside each other, providing existing products and services for the foreseeable future.
While the brands remain the same, as policies start to migrate over to be underwritten on RSA paper at renewal, brokers and customers can expect to see RSA branding and legalities on NIG and FarmWeb documentation going forward.
The sale of our Personal Lines direct business (More Than) involves the transfer of renewal rights for direct Home and Pet insurance. Along with around 300 colleagues and relevant assets including our brands and data to Admiral.
This is unrelated to, and has no impact on, our appetite to write specialist PL products within our Delegated business. This remains a core part of our Commercial Lines strategy.
We’re very keen to widen the product range available to brokers as a result of this transaction.
We are working hard to give all brokers access to NIG and RSA. We will be in touch soon to invite you to start the process to sign a new TOBA, giving you access to our complete suite of propositions and products.
FarmWeb has restricted distribution because of the specialist nature of agricultural insurance. In the short-term there are no plans to change that. We will continue to review this as we move forward with the integration.
If you feel that there is a requirement for you to have access to that element of the proposition, speak with your account manager and we'll engage to understand the account portfolio.
We have identified brokers who do not have a reciprocal RSA agency.
You will receive an email inviting you to start the process to sign an RSA TOBA, giving you access to our full suite of propositions and products.
Please contact your usual sales representative if you haven’t heard from us soon, or have any questions.
Brokers will remain on their existing commission arrangements and credit terms for 2024.
In the medium-term, as we look to create one offer (product and pricing), this will also include harmonisation of commission arrangements.
We will communicate more information on this in Q3/Q4 2024.
As renewals and new business start to be written on RSA paper, you will receive one statement from RSA which will include all transactions.
In addition, you will make just one payment to cover all items on your RSA statements using the existing RSA bank account details.
If you don’t already have a relationship with RSA, you will be contacted directly to ensure you are made familiar with the RSA process.
For NIG Run Off Business you will continue to receive a statement via DLG until all outstanding items are settled. You should continue making payments via the existing DLG bank account for these transactions.
RSA will continue to operate discretely for the time being, and any remuneration agreements will run to the agreed contractual period and terms and conditions.
Maintaining our trading momentum and providing good service is a priority throughout integration. We will review any expiring remuneration agreements on a case-by-case basis, and will work with you to agree the best way forward in the interim to help you meet your customer’s needs.
We are very keen to listen to your views and requests. Please speak to and raise any questions via your usual RSA, NIG or FarmWeb account representative.
For a simple broker and customer experience we are not changing the ‘front door’ to access claims services for NIG or NIG FarmWeb.
That means that there will be no change to the existing telephone numbers for reporting new claims, web addresses, postal addresses or email addresses.
Your regular NIG contact details will remain the same regardless of whether the policy has migrated to RSA or not. Meaning that knowing how to contact us will not change. Claims already notified to the team prior to migration of a policy will also retain their current claim handlers and their contact details, provided to you at first notification of loss.
For policies that have migrated to RSA you will see a change in the policy number format, with a change from the current number format to one that is prefixed by the letters NM.
For new business written on RSA paper for the NIG and NIG FarmWeb brands there will also be a prefix, with the letters NG.
We have used the policy number prefix approach so that it is easy for everyone to identify a policy that is now written on RSA paper.
If you need to notify us of a new claim on a policy that has either prefix you will continue to use the existing ‘front door’ contact details.
When you call to report a new claim, you will use the IVR system to indicate whether your policy number starts with a specific prefix. This will ensure your call is directed to the appropriate claims handling team.
You will also have the option of notifying us of a claim online, following the same NIG link as before.
If you currently notify us of a new claim via email, you can continue to do so on migrated policies using the mailbox, promise.propertyclaims@uk.rsagroup.com.
Once the claim has been registered, you will be given the claim handler contact details just as you would have been provided with before. Including the telephone contact number for follow up enquiries, and updated RSA contact email addresses.
We have implemented internal transfer mechanisms to efficiently redirect any queries you have to the appropriate team.
We will continue to publish the claims contact details in the same way we do today. The NIG claims pages provide details of claims handlers. These details will be updated regularly.
In the short term, wherever your scheme is currently pointed to, we will endeavour to keep this in the same location.
Longer term, we will be looking at where things work best to provide the best service we can to brokers.
Rest assured, if or when things change, we will notify you.
At the point of registering a claim, we recognise the importance of ownership of that claim going forward.
You will be given a specific claims owner, so a named claims handler’s details will be provided.
If you call us, you'll have direct access on direct dials to that handler. If that handler is already on another call, you'll be diverted into a hunt group. This is common practice across the industry, and it is possible that somebody else will answer the call. If they are unable to help, we'll arrange for the case handler to call you back.
The teams are currently working on including the RSA MI and data into the NIG MI report. This will complete over the next few months.
The reports will continue to be produced and supplied as they are today.
If you have any questions, please escalate to your claims account manager.
No decision has been made yet. As we work to harmonise systems and processes, we want to ensure we don’t lose any of the richness across either platform, as both currently do a good job and have some fantastic features.
As and when the decision is made, we will keep you informed, and all brokers will have access.
There is no change to the journey that you currently experience.
For our manually underwritten business (traditionally in Mid-Market) we are reviewing the quote process, particularly for new business.
We are looking at how AI and Data science can help us:
- Drive extra efficiency and capacity to be more responsive
- How we ingest unstructured data more efficiently
- How we triage and enrich the data to get a better view of the risk
- How we then route that to the best underwriter
For our online trade business (predominantly SME) we will continue to look at how we further improve speed of response and accuracy. With the goal of maximising the number of enquiries that go straight through to quote without underwriter intervention.
We're looking to take the best bits of two extremely complimentary businesses and work out where we can redeploy them within the wider business.
Live Chat is something that we employ extremely well in our online SME business at the moment. On a monthly basis, we're doing in excess of 7,000 chats and the level of satisfaction rating is excellent or very good. This is in the mid-90s.
That's the technology we've been working with for a number of years now, and it's exactly the sort of thing that we should be looking to redeploy into as many applicable areas of our business as possible.