Building a great business is a little bit like building a new house – it all starts with strong foundations. The location, the team involved, and the target market are all critical considerations in both endeavours but when it comes to the former, underpinning the strength of any resulting structure is having the right values and ethos in place.
For the minds behind the newly launched The Yorkshire Broker, MD Martin Weaver-Parker (pictured left) and commercial director Phil Hodgson (pictured right), the pre-launch period has been all about setting strong foundations.
The firm’s reason for existence is its commitment to empowering SMEs with the confidence to grow, Weaver-Parker said, and the key to that empowerment is the personal touch. Having seen for himself how some brokerages are losing the individuality and independence required to set their offerings apart, he was encouraged by a friend to really evaluate the opportunity at hand to build a business that reflected the needs of the community he has served throughout his insurance career to date.
“The ethos behind The Yorkshire Broker is all about bringing back that personal service, which I think has been lost in a lot of sectors, not just the insurance sector,” he said. “And the feedback we’ve been getting from clients so far is that they like the service that we give because it’s so personal. We’re focused on giving great service to all our clients of every size and I think we’ll continue to get a good response to that.”
Looking across the market, he said, he can see that there is a cohort of brokers that still haven’t quite re-emerged post the COVID lockdowns. From a client-facing perspective, the move to remote working is still having a knock-on effect on the service levels of some businesses, he said, which is unique to insurance but reflected across the wider UK service economy.
“[Speaking personally], it is frustrating when you can’t just pick up a phone and talk to somebody these days,” Weaver-Parker said. “You just can’t get through to certain businesses now and I think clients appreciate the fact that they can just pick up the phone and speak to us, or we’ll go out face-to-face to have that meeting with them. And things like Teams or Zoom have their place, they’re brilliant for when [you’re] miles away from each other but I don’t think it’s a solution that can replace the personal touch.”
Having the needs of its market front-of-mind is essential to the value proposition of The Yorkshire Broker, he said, because it’s a business that prides itself on being community driven. The firm wants to embed itself within its community, he said, and to give back through its work with certain charities and via sponsoring local teams, etc.
That emphasis on openness and collaboration is really what sets the Yorkshire market apart as a place to do business, Hodgson said. From his experience, the Yorkshire market is built on the premise of people and businesses being willing and ready to support the community that surrounds them.
“When we launched and reached out to certain customers, and customers that had recently come on board it was all about ‘oh, I’ll recommend you. Come and visit us and we’ll take you along to see [other prospective clients]’,” he said. “It wasn’t just a case of this being a transaction that you’d then forget about in a year – they really want to be involved with us as well…
“And we’ve already had some great business off the back of recommendations because they like the idea of working with other local businesses and us all helping each other out with referrals and networking and the like. And as everybody knows, in Yorkshire, we’re all out outspoken and we say it like it is so we really understand each other.”
Weaver-Parker noted that being able to quickly get to the heart of what the client needs is essential and it’s a trait that has only become more important as the cost-of-living crisis continues to impact businesses and families alike. The Yorkshire Broker will be upfront if a customer is already getting a good deal from their current broker, he said, but the nature of a good deal goes far beyond just the price point.
“Price will always be key,” he said. “But we are trying to educate consumers around the fact that with insurance you do get what you pay for… But getting that balance right at the moment is the real challenge. So, what we aim to give is choice. Where possible, we will aim to give multiple options with different levels of coverage. We will make our recommendation but if a client needs it cheaper, then we will give them the full range of options available rather than just a single quote.”
Now established in their Castleford premises, Hodgson and Weaver-Parker have their eyes fixed on what’s next for the business. Year one is all about seizing every available opportunity, Weaver-Parker said, and exploring new avenues for generating leads, finding what works best and then focusing on that.
“It is about getting the foundations right, whether that’s processes, or our core values, or our relationships with insurers,” Hodgson said. “For the first six- to 12 months, it’s about getting business in. And then it will be about taking a look back and reviewing at the end of the year where we performed well and how we can do that even better. That’s the key area of focus for us and that’s what we’re looking forward to.”
What are your thoughts on this story? Please feel free to share your comments below.
