How ARAG is delivering better justice
Authored by ARAG UK Managing Director Tony Buss
The spring is always a busy time for ARAG, but this year has been exceptional.
We kicked off 2024 by completing the acquisition of DAS UK announced last year. The work to integrate our two businesses was already well underway, but the past few months have seen the various workstreams intensify and the final regulatory requirements ticked off.
Our new COO, Tony Coram, joined me to talk about the ARAG Group’s rationale behind the acquisition and the progress we have made integrating the two businesses.
One of our sister companies, ARAG Netherlands, held an international Access to Justice conference in April. The event focused on the theme of empowering people to access the law and brought together legal and technology experts, including futurist Gerd Leonhard and the lawyer and human rights activist Amal Clooney.
ARAG Ireland CEO Adrienne O’Sullivan and I were honoured to participate in the event’s key panel discussion, and she has written more about the event and its importance.
As usual, May saw many of us decamp to Manchester for the BIBA Conference. The scale of the event now is quite remarkable, with almost ten thousand people attending and more than 200 exhibitors.
This was our first customer-facing event alongside the new colleagues who joined when ARAG acquired DAS UK and, as Andy Talbot explains, it was certainly worth the trip.
One of the unique and often unsung benefits that we were talking to brokers about at BIBA is ARAG’s Crisis Communications service, to which all our commercial policyholders have access.
The service is delivered by our specialist PR consultancy partner Chelgate, whose Chairman Terrance Fane Saunders kindly shared his thoughts on managing a media crisis gleaned from 30 years in the business.
As we integrate the DAS UK operations, one impact that brokers will see is a significant investment in technology, not just improving ARAG’s own digital tools but also extending the availability of ARAG products on the most popular trading platforms.
It’s part of the wider strategy to achieve ARAG’s ambitious growth plans that will help us to deliver better products even more seamlessly to brokers and their clients. Our UK Sales Manager, Matt Warren, has taken a look at the benefits this investment has already delivered and what’s next.
Just as we thought things were starting to calm down a little, we’ve had the surprise announcement of a general election. Legal expenses insurers pay particularly close attention to such events, as the legislative agenda can have a huge impact on our policies and operations, from employment law to tenancy regulations, not to mention the court and tribunal backlogs.
Beyond the justice system, one area in desperate need of attention and investment are the country’s maternity services, which have led to so many unnecessary deaths and injuries, brought to national attention in the recently published Birth Trauma Report.
ARAG has done groundbreaking work with partner law firms to provide after-the-event solutions for victims in some of the most difficult cases in what is rapidly emerging as the next national scandal. But our before-the-event Family policies also include personal injury cover, insuring millions of people against the cost of asserting their legal rights in the event of such physical injuries.
The head of sales for our ATE business, Mike Knight, has written about the Birth Trauma Report published last month.
Whatever the next government may have planned for the legal system and beyond, ARAG will be ready to adapt our policies and operations to continue delivering for our partners and providing access to justice for their clients.
