Kicking for goal

Unprecedented economic conditions, thousands of claims going through our Supply Chain every week, bedding in our new Claims processes with our Suppliers and our Centres of Excellence, exciting prospects with our Brokers and changing our Brand – that’s my world at work at the moment!

Now a bit about me……………

I’m Rob Townend and I’m the Commercial and Supply Chain director within Aviva Operations. Ok, good start…I’ll move on to tell you what I do.  I oversee the performance of our claims suppliers, plus RAC Legal Services and Bluecycle.  It’s a mixed bag and means that every day can be different, one day going over the performance with our suppliers, the next dealing with issues like claims farming and containment of rising claims costs.

I’ve just returned from holiday in Canada with the family, mostly sitting by the side of a lake enjoying a beer or two, fishing, canoeing and catching up with old friends and colleagues from the three years I spent over there.  Now I’ve returned and it’s strangely quiet as it’s prime holiday season – so trying to get my mind from my holiday into writing a guest blog has been challenging.

I want to talk about my involvement with brokers, so where better to begin than by telling you that I bumped into an old school friend at the British Insurance Awards a few weeks ago.  I arrived wearing my newly pressed suit, looking forward to meeting some brokers and talking about the current issues at the top of brokers’ minds.  Arriving at our table I see a familiar face, Rob Worrell (MD of The Insurance Partnership); I haven’t seen Rob since my rugby playing days at school in Yorkshire.  We chat about our families and what we have been doing over the past 20 years (yes, 20 years, now I feel old), and then we move on to work matters.

I told Rob that something I’ve been very keen on is getting out there talking to brokers about what we do. This is the main reason why, 12 months ago, we set up a claims broker relationship team whose role is to work alongside our account managers, and Felicity Corrigan (or ‘Flick’ to us), Vicky Wadsworth and the team have been travelling across the UK to spread the word and to listen to our brokers on how we are doing on claims and helping to fix any issues.  A claim is an emotional part of the insurance process for customers and we want it to be as easy and slick as possible….and that’s no mean feat!  We’ve put in claims trouble shooters, given brokers key contacts – but we’ve sill got more to do.

That’s where our team of supplier managers come in; to manage and assess performance of our suppliers and to work with our new Centres of Excellence to address any issues. As you can imagine, we handle a lot of claims at Aviva – over 400,000 in property alone last year. That’s what 2009 has looked like for me… assessing what we are doing and checking that it’s right for us and more importantly, the customer. At times, this hasn’t been an easy question to answer.

So what’s next for me…………………… I am going to be spending some time with Rob Worrell (to share some more school stories, hoping that no embarrassing school photos will make an appearance) and his broker team at The Insurance Partnership.  I am hugely looking forward to hosting the It Pack session in Romford in October, to meet and discuss key issues with the rising stars in the broker world. Then it’s finalising our planning for 2010.  Like I said, no two days are the same…but that’s part of the fun!

Rob Townend will be one of the Aviva hosts taking part in the It Pack session in Romford on Tuesday 13th October.  If you want to register for that event, or any other It Pack session, just go to the website for more info: www.insurancetimes.co.uk/itpack