alan_sanderson

I am Alan, son of Sander, father to Fraser, native of Kilmarnock, friend to English Andrew, I am many things to many people but at this moment I am the ‘Johnblogstitute’. Normally I look after Partnerships for Norwich Union, soon to be Aviva. I know a lot of you out there will be thinking what’s he doing writing on John’s blog, he’s not in the broker business but, here at Aviva we embrace different perspectives. After all, Partnerships is a big piece of Aviva’s distribution strength in the UK, working in concert with our colleagues in the broker world – the lines, to be honest, get quite blurry sometimes but that just adds to the challenge!

One of the biggest perks of being in Partnerships is meeting people from a wide range of backgrounds, culture and organisations. Take for example last Monday; we, in conjunction, with the lovely ladies at Insurance Times, met some existing and potential partners, I am with the Irish on this – there’s no such thing as strangers just friends you haven’t yet met. It was an interesting and lively debate with lots of strong views on what makes a good partnership and what makes a partnership great.  A key theme though was definitely both parties having skin in the game.  Hopefully everyone involved left with a sense of Aviva’s commitment to the Partnership market, I know I left thinking that Partnerships in many ways are a bit like a bag of Revels™ – you don’t always get what you want or expect but if there are two of you sharing the bag, chances are there’s something in it for both of you.

We, Aviva, have had a ‘hard’ 12 months in Partnerships; Competition Commission and FSA direction on the future of the payment protection market, the economic environment and the subsequent impact on trading conditions, some very good friends falling on difficult times, consolidation in the financial services industry – the perfect storm I have heard.  But blow me, on the other hand there is a wealth of opportunities and challenges if we turn and face into it. As Sir Winston Churchill said “kites rise highest against the wind, not with it”.  In Partners’ branches across the country, staff are doing a roaring trade in household insurance – with limited opportunity to sell standard banking fare, insurance products offer them a great opportunity to build on their relationship with the customer in front of them – a “moment of truth” as Cilla Black would say.  Like I said, it gets a bit blurry sometimes between Partnership and the broker world, but something they definitely have in common is that for some of the most important insurance products both Partners and Brokers have a powerful moment; face to face; to engage their customers in a conversation about protecting the most important things in their world.  Our name change to Aviva in June will help us put more of Aviva UK products and services in their hands to sell where and when it makes sense for the customer to buy. How cool will that be!

Alan Sanderson is Director of Affinities