Biba 2026: Intact eyes new commercial lines ‘opportunities’ in eTrade – Becky Henry

Intact Insurance UK is “venturing into new opportunities” in its eTrading service for brokers to drive growth in new commercial lines markets.

Leading the insurer’s SME electronically traded products and propositions is commercial lines veteran Becky Henry, who has spent 26 years at Intact Insurance – formerly RSA – and was promoted to vice president of eTrade in September 2025 from her previous role as commercial lines trading and operations director.

Seven months into the role, Henry’s hands have been full from consolidating RSA and NIG’s “overlapping products” into a single Intact proposition – with the latest business combined product and broker portal, which is the renamed Intact extranet, both launching on 18 May.

This follows four commercial lines products released since the UK rebrand, including property owners and shop released in December 2025, as well as office and tradespeople products launched in March this year.

While the release of its five commercial lines products has been the present focus, Henry enthuses that the insurer is seeking to explore uncharted territory in its eTrading proposition.

Speaking exclusively to Insurance Times, Henry says she is already looking ahead to the second half of the year, in which she hopes to develop products in new lines of business where the insurer “can start to fly some flags that we’ve never flown before”.

And, Henry sees “big opportunity” in the insurer’s professional and financial commercial lines portfolio, which has two key products on eTrade – professional indemnity and directors and officers.

With 30% growth operationally in the past few months, Henry says that her target is to “double the size of this line of business by 2030”.

Also, looking to dust the cobwebs off certain product lines, Henry identifies its cargo eTrade product as one that has remained “stagnant for a while”.

She explains that her team have been able to discover ways to “increase eligibility using the existing framework” in the hope that the insurer “can start to support brokers” in the marine sector.

“We can’t just keep on working in the areas and the domains that we’ve worked in,” she says.

“We’re looking at where can we open up new products, new opportunities, create more cross sell, leverage that to focus on high value premiums rather than by the core standard of what we look at today. All the while, continuing to optimise the core products has got to be our bread and butter.”

Lessons learned 

The desire to explore new lines of business has arrived at a time when Intact has seen the momentum ease in its extranet results – which fell from five stars recorded in 2025 to a four star rating this year.

According to Insurance Times’ Five Star Rating Report: eTrading 2026, which polled 757 UKGI brokers and was published this week (12 May 2026), Intact’s extranet – Intact Insurance Portal – scores declined across all five service factors, with the most pronounced fall revealed to be in quality of support, which fell in the ratings from 4.05 to 3.85.

A hiccup in its previously consistent upwards trajectory, Henry admits that the insurer’s extranet proposition has “stood still” while its “competitors have continued to improve”.

While 90% of its business is on software houses, she explains that only 10% is with Intact’s broker portal and therefore it has made the “decision” to prioritise the development that would produce the “biggest bang for buck in reality”.

This is reflected in the eTrading report results, as Intact retained its five-star insurer-via-platforms rating for 2026, while improving its overall score to 4.27 out of 5 from 4.09 in 2025. The insurer placed third overall, with brokers recognising improvements in the proposition as Intact integrates RSA and NIG products and broadens cover options.

But, Henry reveals that behind the scenes over the past 18 months, the insurer has been investing in a new extranet platform that will host five of the newly launched commercial lines products – and support 15 products overall.

She says that portal includes enhanced “self-service and intuitive search functionality”.

“We’ve not been able to optimise the portal and our extranet solution, which has probably been a bit of challenge for the brokers that do use us,” she continues.

“Nothing’s fundamentally changed [with our extranet solution]. But, as we go live with the new broker portal, we can launch all five new products in one go. It’s a much more seamless journey, much more intuitive and we’ve taken the learnings from all five products launching so this should feel incredibly seamless for our broker partners.”

Building broker choice

Insurers and brokers are operating in what Henry describes as a “bonkers” commercial lines market.

With softening market conditions and shifting customer expectations, Henry says that Intact is focused on helping clients place and retain business and, therefore, the insurer “cannot remain stagnant” in its approach to products and coverage.

As a part of meeting these broker needs, she notes that the insurer is evolving its panel placement strategy by starting to look at “increasing” its average premium.

Currently, Henry says that the insurer’s average premium “sweet spot tends to sit around about £600”.

With pricing set to “drop” this month, she believes the firm will be better positioned to “be more competitive in higher premiums”.

She explains: “We’ve brought in licenced frameworks which create greater empowerment for our underwriting team and provided trading tools to enable them to be able to be more commercial when cases come in.

“As a consequence of that, it gives us the ability to make sure that we’re not just responding, but we’re just constantly finding ways to evolve how we can execute more effectively.”

Ultimately, Henry concluded that these eTrading developments are in aid of supporting brokers “to make easier upfront decisions, take out the volume and support SME customers in a more efficient manner”.

She added: “What we’re building is the infrastructure to give brokers choice, but also make sure that we have the ability to have that real breadth of opportunity to support every single client in this marketplace.”