Recruiting the best is key to firm's success

Insurance is a big business for Peterborough-based BGL Group even in a credit crunch but it is a competitive market, as Business Editor Paul Grinnell reports. HIGH Street sales figures show the credit crunch is making many consumers think twice about how they spend their hard earned wages. But the insurance business is seemingly immune to the belt tightening that is currently going on in households up and down the land. Instead for companies such as Peterborough's insurance intermediary the BGL Group the battle is to secure a profitable share of a vast domestic market that quite simply cannot operate without aninsurance policy of some form of other.

As BGL chief executive Peter Winslow summed it up: "No one can buy a house, car, a motorbike or even a van without also having to buy some form ofinsurance to go with it." He said: "Everything we sell is compulsory. If you own a home or drive a car, motorcycle or a van you need insurance. He said: "There are 26 million homes in the UK, and we have 350,000 of them. "There are 25 million cars about and we insure under two million of them. It is a very big market for us to go at. And grabbing a large slice of that market is vital to BGL's ongoing success. Mr Winslow said: "Overall the group is focused on operating a successful and sustainable business, which means delivering profits. To us, profit means reinvestment in the business to ensure it stays strong. Market share is important to us because it is one of the key drivers of profit. It is an approach that seems to be bringing a great deal of success.

Last year, BGL, which is based at Bakewell Road, Orton Southgate, announced that it had made an incredible 93 per cent increase in profits – up to £43 million. At the same time the firm also revealed staff numbers at its head office had shot up by 250 over the same year to 1,058. The key to the company's success is ensuring that it has access to the established and proven insurance providers, and a top quality marketing expertise to ensure its products are kept firmly in the public eye. Since a strategic change of direction in 1997 which saw BGL turn from being an insurance underwriter to a broker, the group has grown to become one of the largest personal lines insurance brokers in the UK.

This expansion has been achieved through a combination of organic growth and a series of major strategic acquisitions – the last of which took place five years ago and the the group now arranges and administersinsurance for two million customers and employs more than 2,255 people worldwide. In addition to its Peterborough head office, BGL has contact centres in Coventry, Sunderland and Peterlee in the UK, and Cape Town in South Africa. A key weapon in the BGL armoury is the recently created price comparison website comparethemarket.com, which allows customers to rapidly find the bestinsurance policy for them.

news source : http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/