Biba 2014: Canopius to rebrand acquired UK businesses

Canopius will rebrand the UK businesses it has acquired in recent years as part of a plan to simplify access to the company for brokers.

The Lloyd’s insurer also aims to triple the size of its UK retail business over the next to five years, according to UK retail chief executive Tim Rolfe.

Under the change, Lloyd’s motor syndicate KGM, which Canopius bought in 2010, and leisure insurance broker K Drewe, which it bought in 2011, will change their name to Canopius.

Rolfe told Insurance Times: “We are looking to bring all those together under the name Canopius, so we are as clear as we can be to the broker market who we are, what we’re about, and what we offer.

However, individual products with strong associations to a particular brand will be named after that brand.

Canopius is also hoping to demystify the Lloyd’s market.

Rolfe said: “The principal thing we are looking to do is get across to the UK brokers that Lloyd’s has a huge amount to offer the UK market, particularly in the areas of specialist business, niche lines and schemes and so on.

“What has stopped Lloyd’s developing further in the UK is that there is a bit of a cloak of mystery over how brokers should access Lloyd’s and what they should access it for.”

Canopius’s UK retail business currently accounts for annual gross written premium of around £335m. Rolfe said the division has grown by more than 20% over the last two years.

With the backing of Canopius’s new parent, Japanese insurance group Sompo, Rolfe believes the UK division has much more scope to grow.

He said: “We have the resources, we think, to grow in the areas of business we want to be in, to three times the size we are, in a five-year period – so getting on for £1bn.”

While acknowledging that the target was ambitious, he added that there were plenty of opportunities for growth in the UK.

He said: “We feel that the marketplace for brokers in niche and specialist lines is growing all the time and not just because the internet is there as a distribution tool. The internet is creating new niches.”