July 2020 update

Getting “back to normal”

Now that lockdown is easing it is great to see business getting back to near normal. New claims are back to pre-lockdown levels and suppliers and partners are cracking on with the WIP and new claims are coming in.

Some materials are still tricky to get hold of – plaster and plasterboard, external timber items such as fence panels, posts and decking, paints and coatings for external use and bagged cement. Supply of some other items is also being dogged by shortages of the wooden pallets required for delivery. But our suppliers are coping well and we are rewarding those who have done particularly well with our quarterly awards (see below).

MA Group general update

We hope you found our general post-lockdown update useful and interesting. If you missed it, you can read it in full by CLICKING HERE

We are very pleased with how MA Group staff, suppliers and partners performed during lockdown. MA Group and many of its suppliers continued to work within the government’s guidelines and completed 58% of the projects (fulfilment works) that we would have expected to have completed without a lockdown.

This is in stark contrast to many of our competitors and insurers’ own supply chains who completely withdrew fulfilment capacity and service, limiting their services to emergency and make safe only.

We managed to do this by:

• Maintaining weekly payments on time to the networks, as scheduled.
• Adopting a controlled and evidenced practice to issue “partial invoices” for works completed on claims that had not been finished and closed. This released an additional 20% cashflow to suppliers. Thank you to our clients for supporting this.
• Tracking and identifying customer vulnerabilities so we could respect and manage customer and client expectations, and to redirect capacity to alternative claims and projects (such as vacant properties and homes where safe working could be carried out with PPE and social distancing).

The last four months have proven to be challenging, rewarding and a tad stressful! But we are pleased with the decisions and actions we took and our ability to keep things moving. Well done to everyone involved.

MA Assist Supplier of the Quarter

We are delighted to announce that the MA Assist Supplier of Q4 (to June 2020) is Grove Building Solutions.

Grove have gone from strength to strength this year but we are particularly impressed with the way they kept working and performing during lockdown. Grove had some difficult claims to deal with this quarter, particularly with the challenges placed upon them by Covid-19. They have also expanded into the East Midlands and are doing really well covering new post codes for us. Thank you to Simon, Olivia and the team.

Virtus Surveyor of the Quarter

We are delighted to announce that the Virtus Surveyor of Q4 (to June 2020) is Andy Lake.

Andy very rarely says he is unable to help us, whether it be with allocating a new claim in a less than ideal location, or providing easy to understand answers to any questions we might have about his reports. His reports are some of the best written that we get, they contain plenty of detail but are also easy to digest. He is always very approachable and can be relied upon to do what is asked of him. Well done Andy, and thank you.

MA Group MAD Awards

The June MAD winner was Ben Mawby in the Aylesbury control centre..

Ben received two “shout outs” for being MAD in the last month.

During what has been a challenging period Ben has kept opening, dealing with inbound queries and kept invoicing up to speed, to keep the cogs turning for Revival.  In June Ben managed to invoice more than the target for the month for Revival by £130,000.00! This unwavering assistance to Revival was acknowledged by the branches at the recent National Branch Meeting.

Alongside this Ben is always willing to help other areas of the MA Group to assist with the overall workload which is great to see.

No newsletter next month

As usual we won’t be doing a newsletter in August, but it will be back in September. So we hope you all have a lovely summer and, for those of you with kids, enjoy your break from home schooling!