As Ageas comes of age, new broom Steve Casey reveals to Paul Robertson his hopes for providers' future.
Steve Casey is in financial purdah. As head of marketing and propositions, he is unable to talk about his new home at Ageas Protect in financial terms both before and slightly after parent Ageas UK’s annual results hit the markets.
Since conducting this interview, the results have surfaced and are good. There has been solid growth in the protection arena, attributed to an increase in business through that old stalwart, the IFA and a clear win with the G-Day promise before Christmas.
Nevertheless, an inability to talk money with a marketing man makes for a refreshing interview, and Casey, having just hit the three-month mark at Ageas Protect, following a move from Friends Life, still has a fresh eye on the organisation.
Of course, Ageas itself is still a relatively new boy in the protection sphere and is very shortly to hit its five-year mark. Casey alludes to “celebrating internally”, which may or may not be insurance speak for insane Bacchanalian shindigs. But the firm still has 40 of the original staff present in its 240-strong line-up.
The five-year mark will also see Ageas beginning the regular release of its critical illness claims statistics. “We always said that we would start disclosing this data at the five-year mark,” says Casey. “We believe in openness and transparency wherever possible.”
Although he will not expand on it, in the same vein Casey adds: “Last year we also said we would be going into the business protection market and that is still very much the case. We will be launching this in Q2. We will launch with a set of products that will be supplemented later on in the year.”
This spirit of openness extends to its distribution strategy. In May, COVER interviewed the then new managing director Darren Spriggs. He said then: “There is an element of the intermediary marketplace where it never ceases to amaze me that people exist in one shape or form, only to disappear and re-emerge six months later in another shape or form.” Since then, Ageas has been monitoring what its genuine amount of new business is, as opposed to churn.
Casey says: “As was outlined then, we have been taking active steps to assess the risk in doing business with certain distributors and we have taken steps to greatly reduce the amount of business we do with certain intermediaries.”
