Rural Insurance boosts growth 90%

Agricultural specialist Rural Insurance delivered a 90% growth in the third quarter of this year compared to the same period last year.

“We have already achieved just over £2m of new business during the last 6 months of trading and our pipeline for the next 3 months looks incredibly strong,” managing director Simon Stevens said.

 “Rural is aiming to grow our overall market share to 5% and become a top five player within three-five years. Our immediate priority is to continue to improve broker servicing. We’ve implemented new image and workflow technology to streamline policy administration, and our new website has given brokers access to online quotation facilities and a link to I-Market, enabling them to allow them to issue electronic motor cover notes on behalf of Rural.”

Stevens said that Rural has appointed Rachel Tempest to the position of national key accounts manager, starting in early October.

“Rachel has held roles as a successful key account manager at Provident insurance and RSA, and she will have leading role in implementing our delegated authority initiative. Our new east of England sales manager Nicola Edwards joins us from Norwich & Peterborough insurance brokers and started on 26 September, and we have added two new full time roles to our telephone sales team in Harrogate,” he said.

Stevens added that Rural’s commercial multi-vehicle motor product was proving highly popular with brokers in light of continuing high motor premiums for the agricultural sector. 

“We initially set a provisional target of £200K for this product across September and October and it’s clear that we seriously under-estimated the interest in this offering from our trading brokers,” he said.

He said: “The agricultural market is continuing to evolve, as farmers diversify and commodity prices remain on an upwards trend. Recent results from major insurance players in the sector have created new opportunities for agile specialists like Rural.”