Focus on customer service key to ‘sustainable’ business at Royal Sun Alliance

Presenting the half-year results up to June 30 Mark Christer, managing director of RSA UK Personal Lines, announced last week that the personal lines part of the insurer had recorded a profit of £48m, up from £9m the year before owing to the poor weather in 2012.

Personal Lines, mostly based in Chart Way, recorded an 11 per cent growth in its pet business, and saw all three elements of its business grow.

Mr Christer said: “It’s great to see it’s not just one of these businesses doing well. All three business are looking strong and looking healthy.”

He said the personal lines market place was ‘like a battlefield’ and remained extremely mature and competitive. While he hailed the strong set of results, he said there would be no complacency within RSA.

Customer service would continue to be a high priority in order to make the business more sustainable, and he said that the appointment of John Elliott as customer service director had made a huge impact.

He explained: “The thing that makes me most proud, I’m starting to see the focus on customers and momentum coming through in every part of the business.”

“If you have happy customers they are likely to be loyal customers,” he added.

“We are really ratcheting it [customer service] up a notch.”

On the announcement last month that 38 RSA staff were at risk of redundancy in the Commercial Mid Market Operations Team , Mr Christer said that none of the staff fell under him, but he hoped that as many could be redeployed within the overall business.

He said: “We are doing everything we can to support those people and we are actively trying to redeploy them within the personal business.”