Biba 2025: ‘Evolution’ to make eTrading ‘slicker and quicker’ key to Zurich UK’s five star score – David Nichols

Zurich UK is “thrilled” to receive a five star score in Insurance Times’ Five Star Rating Report: eTrading 2025, published this month (May 2025), for its eTrading capabilities via its extranet and software house partners, with David Nichols – the firm’s head of retail – attributing this result to an “evolution” process focused on making digital trading “quicker” and “slicker” for brokers.

The Five Star Rating Report: eTrading 2025 is based on a survey of 750 brokers, conducted between January and March 2025.

Polled brokers awarded Zurich UK’s extranet – Zurich Online – a 4.21 score, which equates to a five star rating. This ranked the insurer second out of 12 extranets included in the research.

In terms of Zurich UK’s eTrading service via software house platforms, the insurer ranked in first place out of a field of nine firms, with a score of 4.24. This again equates to an overall five star rating.

Speaking to Insurance Times at Manchester’s Biba Conference 2025 on 14 May, Nichols said: “We are absolutely thrilled with that result and to be the number one [insurer via a] software house provider for a third year in a row, we feel super proud and so very grateful for that. It just means such a lot to us.

“To know [that the result is] voted for by brokers – that is really important. We can talk about internal measures and we do when we’re sitting in front of brokers. We can share our service standards, but it’s how meaningful it is to [brokers] when they pick up the phone or when they send something in, that’s the important bit. So, the more we hear from them, the better.”

Rapid referrals

Nichols attributed Zurich UK’s results, in part, to the fact that the insurer has “continued to focus on the platform” by adding enhancements, such as dynamic referrals. This aims to speed up the referral process by only asking brokers questions that are relevant to the specific referral in question.

“I don’t think we’ve stood still,” Nichols said.

“When we’re developing [our extranet], we have a complete acknowledgement that time is money from a broker point of view and the slicker and the quicker we can make [the eTrading] experience, the better it is for the end customer and the better it is for broker.”

The other key driver that Nichols believes has influenced Zurich UK’s results in Insurance Times’ report is the insurer’s overarching “service package”. This includes investments in people, service standard monitoring and external training days to educate brokers on how to get the most from Zurich Online.

Nichols continued: “You can’t just throw an eTrade solution live and say ‘brilliant, isn’t it fantastic? There we go’. It’s an evolution. You have to have a great set of people around that eTrade proposition. Because nothing is void of human touch and you have to respect that. It’s how the eTrade and service delivery go – hand in glove. I think that’s so, so important.”

Having an ‘open dialogue’

Nichols added that Zurich UK is celebrating its five star accolade at its exhibition stand today, with the senior leadership team – including Nichols – donning aprons and five star themed name badges to serve broker attendees alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and cakes from 3pm.

He said: “Our stand is about service. It’s about relationships. It’s about building new relationships and it’s about talking to anyone that visits us about the breadth of the offering that we have within Zurich.

“I remain really super delighted with our service and how focused we are on turning around things really, really quickly. I don’t think that’s a norm and I think that does allow us to stand out. We will continue to drive that very, very hard because [it makes] a meaningful difference to brokers – particularly in the trading environments we have right now.

“Being able to overlay service delivery with a bit of transparency is super, super helpful. When you’re talking about a renewal or a quote, it’s important that we have a very open dialogue between the broker and us, just that ability to talk about what we need, what the broker needs and being respectful of both sides.”