Biba 2026: Zurich reacts to double five-star accolades in eTrading Report

The 2026 edition of Insurance Times’ Five Star Rating Report for eTrading is out now and, among a suite of increasingly strong performances, Zurich has emerged as one of only two insurers – alongside Allianz – to claim two coveted five star awards.

The report – now in its 12^th year – is based on a survey of over 750 insurance brokers and seeks to explore their opinions, attitudes and satisfaction levels regarding the eTrading services they receive from insurer partners and software house providers.

To discuss the insurer’s strong results, how it achieved them and how it hopes to build on them, Insurance Times sat down with Zurich’s head of SME trading Nikki Lidster at the Biba Conference 2026.

For Lidster, the key to Zurich’s success – the firm having secured its fourth consecutive first place finish in the platform category and a second place finish in the extranet category – is a healthy and active feedback loop.

“We are absolutely laser-focused on making sure that we are listening to, and acting on, broker feedback,” she explained.

“We use all the data [from the eTrading Survey databook], we have our own transactional net promoter score (tNPS) programme – last year we had 59,000 brokers give us feedback after they’d traded with us – and then we use brokers’ own surveys and meetings at Biba to listen to what brokers want in terms of service, products and underwriting appetite.”

“We put that all into a big feedback machine, where we’re reading every single piece of feedback and taking action. Over the past year we’ve made numerous changes to our underwriting appetite, to our pricing and our propositions.”

Lidster highlighted the addition of no-claims discount conversions to the firm’s mini-fleet proposition on Acturis, and the addition of cover for home-workers to its trades and professions policies as examples of recent feedback-driven service updates.

Incremental gains

Beyond products and pricing, Zurich dedicates much of its time to improving the ease-of-use and accessibility of its distribution, aiming for incremental improvements that hone a user experience it hopes is hard to find elsewhere.

Updates go as far as font changes for better readability and the addition of colourblind-friendly colour palettes. Lidster reiterated that basic fundamentals such as good customer service and human interactions do, however, remain at the forefront of Zurich’s strategy.

She explained: “Last year we handled 490,000 broker eTrade enquiries – that includes ’submit to underwriter’ referrals on any of the platforms, through live chat or through the phones – and we really stand behind the fact that we want brokers to trade with us however they want to.

“We don’t force them down the live chat, we don’t force them to phone us, [they can engage with us] however they want to.

“We have over 200 underwriters now in Zurich SME. No matter how [brokers] trade with us, we feel really strongly that there should always be an individual at the end of that referral – not a robot, not a triage AI, an underwriter with underwriting authority.”

Indeed, in April, Zurich answered 69% of its live chats within 30 seconds and 72% of its calls within 30 seconds – statistics that Lidster describes as incredibly important to ensuring the firm is achieving its “really high service standards”.

Lidster also credits Zurich’s ’Magic Breakfast’ charity work with improving its services. For each piece of feedback a broker gives – good or bad – Zurich donates a breakfast to UK schoolchildren. The firm has so far donated 172,000 meals.

Ultimately, Zurich plans to continue to do more of the same as it looks to secure another five-star accolade over the year ahead.

Lidster concluded: “Our focus continues to be being there for our brokers in the moments they want to trade for us, with real life, qualified underwriters.

“We want to say yes to them as much as possible, work with them to understand areas where they’re struggling to place business and widen our appetite to continue to support that.”