Jelf looks to 10% corporate client mix within two years

Jelf plans to build its corporate client base and use its online micro SME quote-and-buy facility to win affinity clients.

The broker has used its takeover of The Insurance Partnership (TIP) as a spring board to grow its corporate proposition, group chief executive Alex Alway said.

It now has 30 people based in Leeds and Bristol dedicated to winning larger corporate clients.

“We’ve already won one or two clients from a big multinational since the merger. We’ve got a very progressive sales campaign,” Alway told Insurance Times.

Jelf arranges healthcare insurance for corporate clients and hopes to broker more of their commercial insurance.

Alway said he would be disappointed if 5-10% of Jelf’s revenue didn’t come from corporate clients in two years’ time.

Jelf has also won a number of schemes and affinity mid-market SME clients and has a “healthy pipeline”, he added.

Jelf recently won the affinity scheme with Regus offices to provide insurance to its office users.

It plans to win more clients by offering a white label version of its online trading platform, Jelf Small Business, for micro SMEs.

Alway put the 29.4% growth of Jelf’s network Purple Partnership to £0.9m turnover down to keeping a very tight panel of insurers. The network is close to signing its 80^th member, he said.

He predicted that Jelf would make “at least one significant acquisition” next year as well as “looking at a number of small ones”.

This morning Jelf reported that turnover of its insurance division had grown from £46.1m to £48.3m. Group turnover, including its employee benefits, financial planning and pensions arms, rose 4.4% to £73m. Earnings before interest, tax,depreciation and amortisation was up 14.4% to £6.8m.

Without the TIP takeover, Alway said Jelf’s turnover would have been flat and profitability unchanged from today’s results.