We're pleased to announce a recent investment in our Regional Specialty team, with 15 new hires across the UK and an enhanced digital platform. Together, these developments strengthen the Regional Specialty proposition and reinforce our commitment to giving you faster access to local knowledge and specialist expertise.
The Regional Specialty team sits within our GCS business, where - alongside regional offerings in property, casualty and financial lines - the team supports mid-market risks that require both specialist underwriting capability and local decision-making.
We now have more than 50 Regional Specialty Lines underwriters across Accident & Health, Construction, Engineering, Renewable Energy, and Marine Cargo & Freight. This growth shows our continued investment in regional specialist expertise. As part of this, the construction underwriting team has increased to five, strengthening local underwriting capacity so we can now support a broader range of complex regional construction risks with greater speed and confidence.
The expansion also includes nine newly appointed Business Development Underwriters. Alongside core underwriting responsibilities, these roles focus on deepening broker relationships, helping to assemble bespoke teams that can bring together Risk Engineering, Client Relationship Managers (CRMs) and Claims Relationship Leads (CRLs). This gives you simpler and faster access to our specialist expertise more easily across the regions.
Digital investment improves speed and self-service
Alongside team expansion, we've delivered a series of major digital enhancements designed to make it easier for brokers to trade. These include the launch of our Marine Cargo & Freight solutions on Acturis etrade and FastTrade, as well as developing a more sophisticated rating model to support more accurate pricing.
Together, these improvements have significantly reduced referral rates across key product lines, with Accident & Health referrals alone falling by over 50%. This enables brokers to self-serve the majority of cases, while allowing our underwriters to focus on more complex and specialist risks.
Strategic priorities for 2026 and beyond
With strong operational foundations in place, our Regional Specialty team is focused on three priorities for 2026:
- Using data-led insights to support sustainable growth
- Tackling underinsurance by identifying coverage gaps so clients are properly protected when it matters most
- Increasing market visibility through deeper, face-to-face engagement with brokers across the regions
“In our latest Broker Barometer survey, brokers said a strong regional presence makes a real difference to service quality.1 With that in mind, our focus for 2026 and beyond is on bringing specialist expertise even closer to our broker partners and clients.
“We’ve invested heavily in people, capability and technology to improve visibility, availability and decision-making across the regions, further supporting brokers to secure the right cover for customers faster and more confidently.
“We know that strong relationships and face-to-face engagement matter, for brokers and for the customers we serve. This investment strengthens our ambition to build long-term regional partnerships and gives brokers and clients access to the same specialist expertise, wherever they are in the UK.” Chris Vine, Head of Regional Specialty at Aviva
References:
1. The research was conducted by Censuswide, among a sample of 250 general insurance brokers aged 18+ (all job levels/seniorities): Operating locally = 30% (n=75), Operating regionally = 40% (n=100), Operating nationally = 30% (n=75). The data was collected between 23.01.26 - 05.02.26. Censuswide is a member of the Market Research Society (MRS) and the British Polling Council (BPC), and a signatory of the Global Data Quality Pledge. We adhere to the MRS Code of Conduct and ESOMAR principles.