Former R&SA manager appointed to spearhead SME drive
Marsh has insisted it will continue to service local SME businesses, despite closing two regional offices.
The broking giant confirmed this week that its Exeter and Dundee offices had closed, with over 15 staff under threat of redundancy.
The news comes as Marsh begins an aggressive drive to penetrate the £10bn SME sector, as revealed by Insurance Times last month (News, 21 June).
A spokesman for Marsh said its client executives in those areas would service SME clients from home.
The spokesman added that its Maid-stone hub would continue to service clients with 13 client advisers being recruited to new roles.
Chris Lay, managing director of Marsh UK, said that the “potential” redundancies were back-office related and the office closures were serviced offices.
“We have 20 offices in the UK and through our distribution network all our client executives are client facing to service clients locally.”
Meanwhile Marsh announced that Chris Wallace had been appointed to lead Marsh’s SME drive, as head of its commercial client practice in the UK
Wallace was formerly sales manager for affinities and director of small business at Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA).
Lay said: “The small companies market in the UK has attractive growth oppor-tunities and Marsh is developing ambitious plans to secure a leadership position within it.
“Chris has a proven track record and ex-tensive experience in this market making him the natural choice to lead our ex-pansion. We are very pleased to have attracted an executive of his calibre to spearhead our drive.”
Broking share to fall
Insurance broking will fall to 70% of Marsh’s business within five years as its risk advisory business grows, its UK chief executive said this week.
Marsh is currently looking to reposition itself from being solely an insurance broker to a risk adviser.
Martin South said: “Marsh will never leave broking behind completely although in four to five years we would expect the business split to be around 70/30 in favour of broking.”
He added: “We have seen a huge demand from clients for risk advisory services. As companies and individuals become more accountable, clients are looking for more credible advice.”
According to Marsh, there is evidence from insurers that companies can influence the effect of the insurance cycle by proactively assessing their risk and looking for ways to reduce to it.
