Brokers are an essential part of the insurance industry, accounting for 51% of the total general insurance market in the UK based on GWP for 2018. As such, insurers are actively seeking ways to strengthen their relationship with the broker as a key part of their business strategy and seminars are part of this.
Based on GlobalData’s 2019 UK Commercial Broker Survey, brokers currently consider competition from other brokers to be the biggest threat to their business, with 19.6% of respondents sharing this sentiment. In second place is Brexit and economic uncertainty, as cited by 17.2% of respondents. While there is little insurers can do to address economic uncertainty, insurers typically offer broker training as a competitive advantage to their brand. This training typically focuses on educating brokers on their products and providing additional resources that can be accessed online.
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AXA is one of the insurers that have launched seminar-based training for brokers. The goal of AXA’s seminars is to address some of the industry’s concerns. The first seminar took place in December 2019, focusing on managerial training and benchmarking teams’ existing culture. The second seminar, scheduled for February 2020, will focus on addressing workplace issues such as poor performance, absenteeism, grievances, complaints, and conflicts – particularly surrounding harassment.
The seminars should boost AXA’s reputation in the UK, especially as the media has brought a lot of attention to workplace sexual harassment in the financial services industry.
However, AXA’s seminars do little to address brokers’ actual needs or concerns. GlobalData’s 2019 UK Commercial Broker Survey found that only 1.2% of brokers flag staff-related issues as a concern for the industry. Such a low proportion suggests AXA’s seminar efforts might not captivate the interest of brokers. An alternative approach insurers could implement is combining both harassment-related issues with their product training, creating an overall image of their brand that would encourage other insurers to follow suit.
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