Over the past few months we have been working at making Norwich Union Commercial e-services a better place to trade. As well as pricing based initiatives we have added new functionality and the Pub Restaurant and Hotel product to our commercial e-trading platform.

Please read on to catch up on what's been happening online.

Discounts to Package Premiums for online Commercial quotes
If you have not heard already additional discounts have been introduced to 3 of our e-traded package products:

• 15-25% discounts on Self-Employed
• 10-37.5% discounts on Shop and Salon
• 20-45% discounts on Office & Surgery

These discounts are already live on i -market and the Norwich Union e-services system.

System enhancements

A number of changes have been made to our commercial e-services area, enabling you to carry out the following activities:

• Quote for commercial package business
• Review existing quotes
• Print off policy documentation for any package product
• Pay premiums by instalments or credit cards
• Submit mid-term changes for any commercial policy

Following successful pilots this system is now available to all brokers. If you have not yet registered to use the system please contact your Account Manager.

New package product on-line - Pub, Restaurant and Hotel now available

We have now added our Pub, Restaurant and Hotel product to our automated quote system which allows you to obtain instant quotes on-line - give it a go on your next case - we think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Usability Improvements

Following your feedback we have made a number of changes to the quotation system to improve usability. These include:

• Improved navigation through all quotations
• Amendment to cover start dates
• Additional trades codes on Self-Employed
• Improvement to the treatment risks section of Self-Employed
• Screen validation on Self-Employed

Guides have been created to support users through the commercial sign-on and quotation process and each user already registered on the system will shortly receive a copy of the guide.

We need to say sorry

Apologies are due, the system has suffered some down time, the time after the August bank holiday being the worst, following a huge electrical storm in Norwich. Overall, between the core business hours of 9am until 5pm it was online for 95% of the time, which is good but not good enough. Rest assured this is something we take seriously and will continue to monitor tightly.

And finally

Our online users deserve to have regular communication from us about what is happening at Norwich Union relating to online trading - keep an eye out for the first edition of 'What's online' which will come straight to your desktop towards the end of October.

Any queries please contact your Norwich Union Account Manager in the first instance.

Published: 12/10/2006