Jason Livingstone talks to Chris Wheal
JasonLivingstone runs Livingstones Warman Insurance Brokers in Yeovil, Somerset. It is the archetypal community broker, he says, with four divisions covering personal lines, commercial lines, niche/specialist, and financial services. Specialist areas include cherished high performance cars and a mid-net worth scheme. Most of the client base is local – within 25 miles – and it includes many small businesses. It remains a high street broker with personal lines customers walking in off the street. The company has 13 staff, many part-time. GWP is £2.5m.
How did you make it where you are today?
I left school in 1975 to be an arable farmer in Somerset, but very quickly realised that without family land you could never make it on your own, so I went into sales and marketing for a specialist biotechnology company. I ended up in the US for five years, but I was burning out. I had taken my pilot’s licence in the US and all the wealthiest guys I met flying seemed to be in insurance. They pointed out the advantage of renewal income, so I gave up my job in 1985 and came back to the UK and started my own business in 1986. My dad said he would give me the money if I took a job in the industry for six months. I worked for Barclays Bank in financial services, did well and then left. We opened on the high street and put the flags out and used the then high tech “motorscreen” computer for our motor schemes, and people came through the door.
What are they key challenges ahead?
In personal lines the challenge is to compete with the big boys and their marketing. Personal lines has been annihilated by them and the behaviour of the insurers towards them. If someone under 25 comes in we basically have to tell them not to bother with us as we cannot compete. Aggregators do exactly what we do and if insurers gave us the same rates, I’d be able to saturate the market without advertising. We’re still profitable but it is market share that is the problem.
What has changed the most since you started in insurance?
The amount of compliance we have to wade through. It has not made a big difference to our working practices except that we have lots of paper to prove it. This costs us about 4% of our gross profit.
What advice would you offer someone just starting out?
Get CII qualifications – I think that is the way the FSA is going. It will insist we all pass exams. That is what it has done in financial services, and general insurance is following. So do those qualification sooner, rather than later. But it is also important to remember that this is a personal business and your personality is how you obtain and retain business.
What is the biggest mistake you have ever made?
Putting too much faith in relationships with individual insurers. I believed their bull about long-term support. They offer a big discount and guarantee it, but almost as soon as you switch quantities of business to them, they adjust things.
What was your biggest success?
Clients confirming we were good people to do business with. Having great staff, and a philosophy of walking away from bad business rather than just selling cheap. I have seen companies go bust by becoming bucket shops. Advice is what we are about, not cheapness, and sticking to that principle is our biggest success.
What is your unique selling point?
Great staff who give personal, professional service. Our customers know we will not be the cheapest, but we will spend time with them. Our clients tell others they should come and talk to us because we are really helpful. We get good cross-sales too as clients want more.
Talk about some of your contemporaries and friends in the insurance market?
Peter Smith at CBC places business for us at Lloyd’s. Wherever Peter goes we will place business with him, he is a straight arrow. I admire Lyndon Wood and, locally, Ian Gosden at Higos, about 10 miles away in Wells, because what they say they do. They are all honest brokers. There’s a scene in the film Full Metal Jacket where a guy says: “You talk the talk but do you walk the walk?” All the guys I have mentioned walk the walk. Shame a lot of insurance companies don’t.
When you are not working what do you do to relax?
If I cut myself shaving, high-octane petrol pours out. Motor sport is in my blood. So, about 15 times a year I will do track days on my Ducati 996 RS motorbike. I am 50-something fat and unfit and yet I go flying round the track pretending to be Casey Stoner at Moto GP.
What is your favourite book/film/football team etc?
Book: The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
Film: Full Metal Jacket – for that line about walking the walk.
Football: I’m more into Moto GP and I support Casey Stoner of the Ducati team.
Day in the life
7.00 I wake up and start making breakfast. I have a young family so its toast for everyone and in a rush. I drop two of my three children at secondary school, then my wife and the six year old, and I am in the office by 8.30.
8.30 It is emails and anything I should have done the day before.
10.00 I will have a management meeting. It could be about marketing or compliance or new business figures or just fire fighting. I have a 15-minute meeting each week about each of our four divisions too.
11.30 I hold the underwriter pen for the cherished high performance car scheme, so once every morning and once every afternoon I make time to deal with any special cases. That could be a special loading for a new quote with modifications. For example the other day I had a Show Supra, a 450bhp car that had 18 modifications, but it only did 500 miles a year to shows. And then I had a BMW M3 CSL with just 5,000 miles on the clock. How do you come up with an agreed value for that? Given that I am a very sad anorak, I get a great deal of pleasure from underwriting these cars. Boys and toys I suppose.
1.00. I do not stop for lunch but have a sandwich at my desk.
2.00 This is the time for meetings with insurers or clients. Most insurers come to me but I see most clients on their premises.
4.00 My afternoon session of dealing with the cherished car scheme.
5.00 The office doors shut and I start all the tidying up and getting back to people. You cannot delegate everything, so you have to contact all the people who called, even if that is just to say you will contact them again tomorrow. I live by my Blackberry though. The other Sunday I was gardening when a client email pinged in about having had a minor prang to his door, asking if he should just get it fixed or go though the insurance. I was able to answer him there and then by email. He was so impressed to have immediate response.
6.30 I leave for home, which is just five minutes away. We will have a big family meal and sit round the dinner table together.
7.30 I have moved into an eighteenth century house so there is a lot of work to do on the house and the garden. I also spend an amazing amount of time on the internet – all to do with cars and motorbikes. And my brother-in-law is a publisher and he gives us loads of free books, so I try to read a lot. I hardly watch television nowadays.
12.00 It is usually midnight before I go to bed.
