How DTLA finalist The AA is driving to digital

'We are now leading the market with digital convenience'

The breakdown insurer has just completed the first phase of a widescale digital transformation.

As a household name synonymous with breakdown recovery and insurance, and a heritage than spans nearly 120 years, The AA has to work hard to remain on the cutting edge and maintain the high levels of services expected by its customers. This is especially true as we embrace digital transformation and develop additional services to our core propositions, returning to growth and remaining a brand to be trusted.

2024 was a milestone year for The AA, marking the completion of the first phase of the growth strategy. The business has returned to a position of financial strength, attracted new investors, embedded a breadth of new leadership and established a new, highly capable and agile digital function.

As driving, vehicles and customer expectations evolve, The AA has recognised that in order to remain relevant and convenient for new and existing members, it has to invest time and effort into its digital experiences.

For our core products, breakdown and insurance, we've replatformed and modernised our digital technology, allowing us to personalise and optimise the digital journeys with much greater ease, making better use of mobile technology to make reporting a breakdown even easier, and introduced AI into our webchat capability. All of this has contributed to a 20% increase in revenue.

For our developing businesses, such as our driving schools, service & maintenance products and our second-hand car marketplace, we are using modern technology stacks and delivery methods to digitise the customer experiences. In some cases, we are now leading the market with digital convenience, such as allowing prospective driving instructors to purchase their VR training packages online.

As well as improving existing products and services we're also launching new, digital-led products to market. One of them, launched from our innovation arm, AA-X, uses connected-car technology to predict when cars need servicing or attention. With the product still in its infancy, opportunities in both B2C and B2B markets are being explored.

We are also proud to have developed the new AA Driving Theory app, which was launched in September 2023 and has already been used by over 35,000 users. Working with our development partner, Publicis Sapient, we invested up front in design and discovery phases to truly understand what new drivers need to help them get off to best start on their driving journey. The new app was one of the first showcases of the updated AA branding, the first commercial mobile app for The AA and the first use of Flutter as a technology choice, allowing for slick and engaging, gamified content.

Underpinning all of this is our commitment to raising the bar for our customers, living up to and exceeding their expectations. We've invested time and care into improving how we work so that we are confident we are always pushing ourselves to improve, testing for better outcomes and delivering as much value as quickly as we can to our customers.

I am immensely proud of what we have achieved so far and cannot wait for the rest to come.