RSA launches Birmingham trading site after restructure

STEPHEN HESTER, the group chief executive of commercial insurers RSA, has officially launched the company’s largest trading site in Edmund Street, Birmingham.

The former RBS chief executive joined RSA in February 2014 after five years at RBS.

The Interchange Place offices are part of the insurer’s strategy to be more outward facing in the regional communities. It has centralised its support operations in larger regional hubs, which has resulted in a change of focus for a slimmed-down Birmingham team.

Its former site in Colmore Row has closed, with the support functions moving to Manchester, to leave a Birmingham operation which is “on the frontline with our customers”, said Lee Mooney, RSA’s regions and SME director for the North.

He added: “Our regional presence is important to us and the opening of this new Birmingham office is an exciting development in our history at the very heart of the Midlands’ insurance market.”

Internationally, RSA has also disposed of non-core businesses to focus on its UK, Scandinavian and Canadian businesses.

Launching the site, Mr Hester said: “The company is doing well – we haven’t always been able to say that. Touching wood, for the last six weeks [of the year], we might have the best underwriting year in the history of the company.”

Speaking in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory, he added: “I don’t think the world’s economy will be that much different in six months’ time than it would have been.

“We are still having our own minor excitements with Brexit. The thing we have all learnt about the important events that go on on the world stage is there’s a degree of volatility but life goes on.

“Our industry is relatively mature. It’s slow growth, we are all having to fight hard to grow our businesses.”