Following the announcement of RSA Insurance’s 2018 results, CEO of the UK and International division Scott Egan (pictured) has said the company needs to “restore credibility” in certain areas going forward.
RSA’s results showed a higher net attributable profit in 2018 than 2017, £326 million compared to £269 million. But when it came to underwriting, the business was down significantly compared to 2017, which the company attributed to adverse weather events and challenges in its commercial lines business.
This was particularly evident in the London Markets area, which has caused RSA to withdraw from certain businesses, and to put forward a strong plan for 2019 and 2020.
“We’ve obviously set ourselves a challenging plan for 2019 in our underwriting rating plans, in our underwriting action plans and in our claims initiatives,” Egan told Insurance Business.
“You might term them as more business as usual for an insurer, and they are, but we have to execute on them, and we have to do them well.”
Egan, who was previously the chief financial officer of RSA, only stepped into the CEO role at the start of February.
“[The exits and the plan] is my focus as I come in here,” he explained. “I’m hopeful that those will bear fruit in 2019 and create a platform going into 2020, because I think we have to restore our credibility in that space.”
While Egan is in a new role, he notes that he has been at RSA for some time.
“I’ve been saying it’s like I’m moving from the roof rack of the car to getting under the bonnet,” he said. “I think I just need a bit of time to look at all of the lines, get out there meeting the customers, talking to all of the brokers and re-establishing some of my relationships with them.”
Brokers are a big part of his focus in the next year, and in the even shorter term too. “The broking community are a critical community to RSA for a number of reasons,” Egan explained.
He noted that their results would not have been as good without brokers, and he wants to focus on why that is, and how to improve those relationships.
“Number one they’re a very, very important distribution channel for us. Our UK domestic business made a profit in 2018 and part of that was the broker channel,” Egan explained.
The CEO is going to get out on the ground, he said, and meet brokers to talk frankly about RSA.
“One of my priorities as I come in here is to go out to the regions and meet brokers,” he said. “In part that will be listening to what they say about RSA. There’s nothing quite like listening to customer feedback. I want to make sure that I listen to what they say is the good points and strong points of RSA and also the things we can improve.”
Egan is very excited to be in his new position and isn’t afraid to talk about what RSA can do better. He wants to improve and talk to brokers about that, so the company can go from strength to strength in 2019 and 2020.
“I’m determined to bring an improvement to some of the areas they highlight,” he said. “I’m looking forward to getting out and re-establishing some of those relationships and making new ones, and I’m going to do that over coming weeks.”
