By Tovah Grosscurth, RSA's Managing Director, Commercial Lines.
Insurance is a business built on decisions about the risks we’ll take, the promises we’ll make, and the service we’ll deliver. For many years, confidence in underwriting discipline has been the industry’s benchmark of strength. But looking ahead, confidence in service will be the differentiator that separates those who outperform the market from those who fall behind.
We often talk about service as if it’s a soft skill or a reactive function, but in a market as interconnected and fast-moving as ours, it’s anything but. Service today is a core component of strategy. It’s how decisions are actioned, how value is delivered, and how trust is either earned or lost. And when margins are tight and client expectations are high, how we show up matters more than ever.
Service has taken on new meaning in a post-pandemic, digital-first world. With so much of our trading now done remotely, it’s become easier than ever to communicate without truly connecting. That often looks like responding without a resolution and relying on tools over judgement.
It’s not that digital platforms are the problem, many have improved access, transparency, and speed. But they should enable judgement, not replace it. We still need professionals who can cut through noise, contextualise complexity, and make confident calls when the path forward isn’t clear. That’s where brokers find real value and where relationships become resilient.
The truth is, technology can accelerate a process, but it can’t interpret tone, grasp nuance, or read between the lines of a challenging broker conversation. That’s the role of empowered, confident people. When service becomes transactional, we lose the space for judgement and that’s when delays, confusion, and mistrust start to creep in.
There needs to be a better, bolder way forward. For us, it’s not about speed for speed’s sake or surface-level touchpoints. It’s about how confidently our people show up in every interaction – how they listen, how they explain, how they problem-solve and follow through. That’s what builds trust and that’s what earns the right to grow.
Confidence here doesn’t mean always having the perfect answer, instead, it’s about taking accountability. It means being proactive with communication, transparent about constraints, and willing to make a call when others hesitate because that’s what brokers remember and what clients value in moments of pressure.
As risks like climate volatility and supply chain fragility intensify, clients are asking harder questions, and they need guidance that’s informed and decisive. Brokers can’t be left waiting for consensus; they need partners who can assess a situation and offer a point of view.
Investing in a culture that puts decision-making back at the heart of service is essential, and empowering teams to take ownership, resolve complexity quickly, and leave the people on the other end feeling seen and supported is what will shift the dial. It’s not a return to old ways of working, it’s an evolution combining the best of what technology enables with the best of what confident human judgement delivers.
In the end, that’s where confidence really matters. Not in headlines or mission statements, but in the day-to-day delivery in how a claims handler talks a customer through a loss, how an underwriter backs a decision, or how a relationship manager picks up the phone instead of sending an email. That’s the kind of confidence we’re building and the type of service we think is worth investing in.
