Markel’s Nic Brown on how brokers can drive firm’s rapid growth aims

When Nic Brown was brought in at the start of 2018 as Markel’s first-ever sales and marketing director of UK national markets, he had a big job on his hands.

Brought in to “significantly increase” Markel’s footprint in the UK, the former Bupa Global sales director has been the architect of transforming the firm’s approach to brokers as it looks to hit £250m gross written premium (GWP) by 2021 from £100m in 2016.

The business has built its proposition around combining insurance, tax and legal services, but, before Brown’s arrival, he said it had segmented brokers too much.

Key to Markel’s restructuring of its broking operations has been breaking down this segmentation, Brown said.

“One of the things we used to do is tier our product structure,” he said. “Meaning different brokers had different access to different products. But, we’re trying to grow, so brokers need more awareness of all our services.”

E-trade

This includes the announcement at the start of this year that all brokers will be able to refer transactional business to Markel’s e-trading team, Broker Connect.

Around half of all professional indemnity, public liability and directors’ and officers’ policies are dealt with through Broker Connect, which was created two years ago.

But Brown said face-to-face contact with brokers would continue to be at the heart of the business, and that Markel would not push them online to drive efficiencies.

“We’re lucky to have a good reputation anyway, but this year we have started to see our structure better support our intermediaries,” he said.

“I’ve worked in a number of sectors and gone through many different distribution channels, so and I’ve seen what some competitors do. Often, they try to push brokers into online transaction pieces. We want to do the opposite.”

Brokers

Brown said that the company’s goal was to let brokers spend more time speaking to underwriters, and that allowing more transactions online should free up more time for this.

“The aim of the model we’re building is to articulate to brokers what we currently do is a lot more effective than what we’ve been able to do in the past,” Brown added.

“We need to build more relationships which have a lot more depth to them in terms of the dialogue.”

Brown said it was a willingness to adopt this personal approach was why he decided to join Markel.

He said: “I looked at a number of different roles when I left Bupa. I saw the broker segmentation in the market that is pushing people online or through call centres – reducing the number of bodies that required because it’s more efficient.

“That’s not how I want to work. While others are divesting in regional support, we’re trying to put more people into the regions to build better relationships with the brokers.”

Proposition

Markel has already hired two business development managers this year to help manage broker relationships, and Brown says he wants to recruit more people into the business to form relationships with new brokers.

Markel currently has an estimated 1,900 active broker relationships. Brown says this number will increase as brokers become more aware of Markel’s proposition.

He said: “We have a 2% market share right now, so to write more I’ve got to see more. I’ve got to engage with those brokers so they understand our proposition, meaning they’ll give me more.”

By 2025, Markel wants to have evolved into a £500m business, with three-quarters of revenue driven by insurance.  

The rest comes from the law and tax divisions, business units that Brown was brought in to fully align with the insurance operation. He says the success of these divisions are crucial to the insurance business.

Brown said: “We’re very keen to ensure we are servicing SMEs across the whole gamut of their requirements, rather than just flogging them an insurance product. That’s how we want to differentiate ourselves and that’s how we want to grow.”

Acquisitions

GWP is currently at around £165m, and Brown sees new product lines and acquisitions as another important part of hitting its 2025 target.

The company’s last acquisition was at the end of 2017 when it bought UK specialist buildings services insurer ECIC.

But Brown expects Markel to complete another purchase this year, despite having not yet finished integrating ECIC’s product set with Markel.

“Our growth is absolutely underpinned by brokers, but acquisition plays an important part as well,” he said, adding that he was interested both in acquisitions to strengthen its current specialties and entering new lines.

Challenger

To hit these challenging targets the business is going to require significant growth, but Brown says this is part of what attracted him to the role.

“There’s a big difference between building businesses through growth and being on a growth strategy without the business really having that strategic commitment to it,” he said.

“Here at Markel the diversity of the proposition that we have, the fact that we are a challenger brand that gets the opportunity to make our mark and really build this business is what’s got me here.”

And if Markel can attract more of the right people to the business, Brown says the targets can be hit.

“The great thing is growth is in our own hands and it’s really achievable,” he added.