Brokers bringing entrepreneurship to the insurance business

“FITTING into a mould doesn’t sit well with entrepreneurial people,” said Nick Houghton, group managing director at JM Glendinning Insurance Brokers.

“The UK is a nation of SMEs, we trade a lot domestically but we are also a global capital in many sectors, including insurance. Leeds is an insurance capital,” said Nick Houghton of JM Glendinning.

With big names like AXA and Aviva, as well as Hendersons and Romera, it’s a crowded market, but the Leeds-based brokers are well-placed to compete.

John and Joan Glendinning launched JM Glendinning in 1972, before Paul Glendinning took the reins, followed by Nick Houghton joining as group managing director “to take the business to the next level.”

The insurance company has diversified and Mr Houghton believes their business is a one-of-a-kind.

“We’ve hand-picked people and built the business around them,” he said, with geographic coverage across Yorkshire and the North East.

“We have great people running their own bit of the business, and they can use our central operations and our brand. It gives people ownership – the ultimate incentive. We work under a cooperative type of atmosphere.”

Most of JM Glendinning’s employees are classically trained at a big corporation, said Mr Houghton.

“But people get disenfranchised in big organisations, ” said Mr Houghton. These organisations are the ones looking to simplify insurance.

“Let’s face it, people don’t enjoy buying insurance, but you can’t function with confidence without it, and it can be too complex to just do over the phone or online.”

The hands-off approach may be the way forward for straightforward personal insurance, but business insurance gets tricky, he said.

“People dismiss insurance, but they might be getting it from someone who isn’t qualified to make the right decision. That’s why multi-channel insurance is so important, you need to have face-to-face as well as online and phone support.”

The JM Glendinning method seems to be working, the business is now a top 75 broker in terms of size, employing 90 people, and it is only getting bigger.

Mr Houghton said: “We want to grow in the right way, we don’t want to acquire incompatible businesses and crush them together. We will do some, but our office footprint is good and we are growing from within.

“The insurance market is undergoing another period of consolidation, with bigger businesses buying up brokers.

“Whenever you see mass consolidation, there are opportunities. Experienced people with a lot of knowledge see the world change around them, and they have to ask if what they’re doing in a bigger organisation is right for them.

“Larger firms are more uniform and structured, but some people want flexibility, they want to handcuffs off so they can start making decisions.”

“We’re killing ourselves as an industry by not creating environments where people can thrive, but consolidation may mean we get better at selling ourselves and learn the value of promoting ourselves as a community.

Skills in insurance, as in many industries, are a problem.

Mr Houghton said: “We’re not doing well as an industry, in that top quality students don’t always think ‘ I’m going to go into insurance’ and I fell into it like everyone else. It’s turned out to be very fun, but our PR needs to be better. At the end of the day, like in law and finance, we are advising clients, but we don’t promote ourselves in the same way.

“We’re failing at the education level and not representing ourselves well enough, despite our major GDP contribution. Business in the UK wouldn’t happen without insurance, so it’s about time we invest in it.”