Q&A with Jon Greenwood, acting chief executive of Direct Line Group

What has been the biggest challenge and greatest achievement of your company in 2023?

It’s been a challenging year, mainly driven by high claims inflation and regulatory reforms that created substantial headwinds for the industry.

We’ve had to take some decisive actions, setting out three key priorities to restore capital resilience, improve motor performance and to maintain the performance of our non-motor business.

We have made significant progress towards addressing all these priorities, announcing the sale of our broker commercial business that will strengthen the Group both strategically and financially.

We’ve also taken significant pricing actions where we estimate that we are now underwriting profitably, consistent with a net insurance margin of 10%.

We are incredibly proud to have successfully migrated almost 700,000 Motability customers on the 1 September providing all Motability Scheme customers with innovative digital online management, outstanding customer service and expert claims and repair capacity.

In addition to this, we were delighted to welcome about 600 new colleagues to the DLG family, who will deliver the best customer service from their new office based in Liverpool.

How has your company assisted customers in vulnerable circumstances?

Putting customers at the heart of everything we do is a top priority for Direct Line Group.

We understand that each of our customers are different, and for some, this may mean they need extra support from us when handling their insurance.

At Direct Line Group, all our 5,000 front line staff have completed dedicated training, designed to give them the knowledge and tools they need to identify vulnerabilities.

Our bereavement team plays a key part in helping people through difficult times and are specially trained to support customers when dealing with losing a loved one.

We see vulnerable customers as an evolving strategy and not a once and done, therefore there is continuous activity to help all colleagues provide a good outcome for our vulnerable customers.

We have developed a suite of online tools to support our colleagues in helping to identify and address vulnerabilities when speaking to a customer.

Once identified, the tool provides several considerations and options for our colleagues to use, providing the required service adjustments to make it unique to that customer.

Building on our successful partnership with Plain Numbers, we continue to work together to train more colleagues as practitioners, promoting simplified communications across the business, helping support customers with math anxiety.

What is your plan to grow the business?

We are proud to have implemented initiatives that ensure we have more opportunities to be brilliant for customers every day.

Two years ago Motability Operations chose DLG to partner with them to provide their insurance and have now successfully migrated, on time, almost 700,000 customers to Direct line.

This partnership has grown Direct Line Group’s Motor customer base by about 20% to nearly 4.5 million, adding further scale to Direct Line Group's leading claims management service.

In September we launched our motor ownership app Caha! an all-in-one platform, covering all aspects of car management and ownership.

As DLG already provides insurance, rescue, legal and accident repair capabilities, we see the launch of Caha! as a huge opportunity to open those services, and develop new ones, to a wider audience.

We’ve also just launched our brand-new Direct Line Essentials product, aimed at customers who want value for money but still able to benefit from a great service from a brand they trust.