Seven jobs to go at Vela

Seven jobs are to go at Oval-owned underwriting agency Vela in a bid to cut costs, Oval chief executive Peter Blanc has confirmed.

Blanc told Insurance Times that three management staff and four frontline underwriters will be made redundant following a consultation last month.

Among those to go are Vela managing director Duncan Scott, and head of underwriting and operations Matt Gifford.

The remaining 20 staff will now report to Blanc and insurance broking managing director Patrick O’Connell.

“We have got seven product lines in Vela that have been generating a reasonable degree of GWP, but when you added all the costs associated with that the business wasn’t really making us much in the way of uplift,” he said.

“So we decided to simplify the structure, put the management of the product lines back into the main insurance broking business and as a result of that there are a few job losses, but the business will be much stronger for it.”

Blanc said his plan was to grow Vela, focusing on the contractor cover and personal accident and travel products and excess of loss scheme.  

“We have got some really good facilities and we just need to make the most of them,” he said.

“We were in danger of bogging the business down with management rather than freeing them up to go and trade.”

Vela was launched last year, offering delegated underwriting authority across eight main product lines that were previously sold through Unique, a set of managing general agents that Oval launched in 2009, as well as its contractor cover and excess-of-loss offerings. Vela wrote almost £20m this year.

Blanc aid that Oval was firmly on the mergers and acquisitions trail, but added that 2013 was probably the earliest date for an acquisition.

“We are back in the market to acquire businesses,” he said.

“We have been meeting with a few brokers but it is still early days.

“I would be surprised if anything happened in the next few months but I would like to think something is going to happen in 2013.”