QBE will launch a webchat facility due to be online in three weeks. 

The West Midland team launched a pilot with live chat on its minibus product with five brokers, Rightsure, Bayliss and Cooke, Morton and Michel, Bluefin and Jelf, as it tries to further enhance its e-trade proposition. 

Dave Greaves, QBE head of SME said, "Assuming the pilot continues the way it has done we will roll it out to the rest of our minibus brokers and following that we will roll it out with all of our SME commercial products." 

It has been reported that the chat service would go live in two to three weeks with one product being pushed to 500 brokers. Following the successful role out of this it is then planned that the Stafford team will roll the chat service out across eight other commercial products to 500 brokers in phases. Brokers who log on to Acturis to obtain a minibus insurance quote have the option to click on the 'chat' button to have a real-time on-screen conversation with underwriters that make decisions. Greaves said, "QBE is a broker only insurer and what we want to do with our brokers is allow them to communicate with us in any way that they want to whether that be face-to-face, telephone or indeed clicking on a chat button."