RSA moves to ditch brokers

Royal Sun Alliance (RSA) is planning to axe some of the members of its 2,000-strong Broker First network.

Kevin Roberts, the insurer’s sales operations and strategy director, said the move was “to make space and improve relationships.

“We are looking at improving our service but, as we only have a certain budget, it may mean exiting some of our relationships with some of the smaller brokers that we can’t work with, who don’t want to work with us or who don’t fit with our appetite.”

He said RSA could not confirm how many brokers might leave the network. “We haven’t developed the proposition fully yet. We’re doing profiling at the moment but a lot of it is around people who haven’t historically used us and have very small accounts.

“We are contacting them to find out why and if there is a prospect of building a more sizeable account. But that is not the only criteria [we are using]. Some people may act in areas outside our appetite, for example.”

Roberts said that Broker First was formed to allow RSA to focus on smaller brokers – although they were not bound into an exclusive relationship with the company. “A lot of the people we deal with are either part of the Willis network or Broker Network,” he explained

Roberts admitted that the insurer did not always maintain relationships. “Some brokers have rightly said that they have not heard from us in a while. They want us to improve our relationship with them and minimise the number of points of contact.”