Integration Q&A

We’re keen to create one business and one voice to brokers.  We are targeting two major milestones.  Between May and July, we will transfer people, premises and assets and then swiftly begin migrating customers to RSA in a phased approach, which will complete in Q3 2025. The priority is to manage the integration whilst maintaining business as usual levels of service.

We are working to ensure the transition is as seamless as possible for you and your customers, which means we will continue to offer multiple products and prices in the market under common leadership with the goal of having one offer in the medium-term.  In order to provide a seamless experience, RSA, NIG and FarmWeb have been working on the integration including sharing and comparing products, pricing and commission tables to prepare for the migration of customers to RSA in Q3 2024.

View timeline

We’d love our teams to be co-located and working side by side as soon as possible.  Creating and embedding the culture of the new organisation is fundamental to our future success.  As both businesses have premises in different locations across the UK,  it’s important we review the full location strategy to ensure we do the right thing for you, our customers, and employees.

We will not compete on business written by RSA.  New business presentations which clearly state RSA as the holding insurer will be declined and you will receive confirmation of this from your regional office.

Whilst we anticipate the instances of this to be rare, we have established an internal process for those cases, where we will manage follow-lines/cumulative capacity across NIG, FarmWeb and RSA on single risks. Our underwriting teams will collaborate to find the best way forward for you and the customer.

For SME/e-trade existing business held by RSA, the high-volume nature of this business means we will continue to quote on RSA business (and vice versa) until the integration is complete. For delegated business, it is less likely that we will be competing on individual MGAs/schemes, but customers have the right to choose the wording and terms that suit their needs.

Each arrangement will be considered on its own merit.  In these situations, they will be considered within the NIG and FarmWeb leadership for a prompt decision to provide early clarity for you.

We’re very keen to widen the product range available to brokers as a result of this transaction. We will continue to operate separate agency management processes while we work through some system complexities as part of integration. For the time being existing Terms of Business Agreements (TOBAs) will remain in place for NIG, FarmWeb and RSA.

Brokers will remain on their existing commission arrangements and credit terms for 2024. In the medium-term, as we look to create one offer (product and pricing) this will also include harmonisation of commission arrangements. We will communicate more information on this in Q3/Q4 2024.

NIG/FarmWeb will continue to operate discretely for the time being and any remuneration agreements will run to the agreed contractual period and terms and conditions.

Maintaining our trading momentum and providing a good service is a priority throughout integration. We will review any expired or expiring renumeration agreements on a case-by-case basis and will work with you to agree the best way forward in the interim to help you meet your customers needs.

We are very keen to listen to your views and requests. Please speak to and raise any questions via your usual NIG/FarmWeb or RSA contact.

Insurer name changes are being updated as part of the integration process. Also, we have not yet found any processes which will require re-keying into Acturis. If this changes, we will let brokers know immediately.

There are no plans to change our current approach to motor trade. We also have a new eTrade Motor Trade product that can cater for smaller motor risks, which is currently being tested and we are committed to offering this to the market.

Yes, we will continue to offer quotes via Power Place on Open GI.

As we integrate with RSA, existing products, systems, and services will remain as they are today, but this will be reviewed as we aim to offer one compelling proposition in the market.

RSA are committed to maintaining the regional footprint of the NIG offices.

Throughout integration the NIG product suite and cover sections will remain the same as they are today. Professional and financial classes of business will remain available directly through RSA. This will be reviewed as we aim to offer one compelling proposition in the market.

There are no immediate plans to change the NIG and RSA brands.

Yes, our risk appetite and capacity will remain as is it is today.

RSA’s schemes ethos is not dissimilar to our own, working with affinities where underwriting expertise and strong controls are in place.

This isn’t necessarily a typical straight-forward acquisition of a discrete business. RSA bought an asset of DLG, so much of the work that has been done in this first year has been in relation to the segregation of NIG and FarmWeb from DLG.  By early summer we’ll have begun migrating our business and customers to RSA, along with our data and systems. For claims, the process is slightly longer and will take us further into 2025 to achieve. We don’t want to be operating as two separate trading companies, and we are working hard on how we harmonise our combined product sets and our rating tools; we want to be in a position to offer one best-in-class product under one price, underpinned by one TOBA as soon as we possibly can. We will not compete on held business, if you submit a held risk to NIG, as a new business enquiry, we will not quote, and we’ll explain that to you as and when the situation arises.

We’re trying to move away from the minimum entry thresholds to mid-market new business of £10,000. RSA have a small mid-market proposition offering that they are expanding in line with their wider distribution strategy.  If you have a TOBA with no corresponding RSA access, we’ll be looking to correct that as quickly as we can. We will assign all the corresponding agreements that underpin your TOBA in advance of the business migrating, so you shouldn’t have any challenges.

For the time being, nothing changes. Our SBDM’s, and strategic account managers will all continue to look after their same panels of brokers. If you had previously gone to your RSA or NIG contact, you should continue to do so. We anticipate that we will achieve the required levels of system segregation by mid-July, allowing NIG colleagues to access RSA company sensitive information meaning that we can accommodate joint broker meetings.

The priority right now is separating the asset from the DLG family and getting it smoothly across into the RSA world with minimum disruption. There will be a continual focus on the performance of our portfolios, to look at emerging trends and this will evolve as part of our BAU in the months to come, to eventually achieve the best of both.

We offer Broker Partnership Agreements right across the agency base. They take different forms, each one is bespoke to the individual broker and there are no plans to change our offering.

FarmWeb has restricted distribution because of the specialist nature of agricultural insurance and in the short-term there are no plans to change that. We will continue to review this as we move forward with the integration.

We have identified around 350 brokers who do not have a reciprocal RSA agency,  all eligible brokers will be offered one in the coming months. We hope to have completed the onboarding process by September this year so that will allow brokers to have access to the full suite of products and propositions that exist at RSA.