“Pretty chuffed,” is how Richard Talbot-Jones (pictured right) and the Talbot Jones team feel about their acquisition of March Insurance Services, which was sealed earlier this week. The deal is the product of several months of hard work by the two businesses which have now joined ranks - and he is delighted to be able to go out to the market and talk about the purchase.
The move comes with a broad swathe of benefits, he said, including the expansion of the firm’s geographical footprint, an enhanced ability to significantly grow its book of business, and the onboarding of March Insurance Services’ director Amanda Williams, who joins the team as associate director. Given the situation with COVID, Talbot-Jones has not yet had an opportunity to meet up with Williams face to face, he said, but he is looking forward to doing so in the very near future.
“It has been strange doing it all remotely,” he said. “But one of the good things to have come out of the lockdown is that everybody has got used to working remotely and it doesn’t feel like the barrier to doing business that it did before… And, actually, one of the things about working remotely and using tools like Teams and Zoom is that I’ve met quite a few of my clients ‘face-to-face’ for the first time.
“Because in addition to our clients in London, who we used to go and see quite regularly, we’ve also got a lot of church and charity clients that are dotted around the country, which makes it harder to just pop in and see them. So, we’ve had the chance to see them for the first time [using these channels]. While we haven’t seen a lot of local clients during this, we have had the opportunity to speak in that way to quite a few others we’d never seen before, which has worked out quite nicely.”
Exploring how the deal came to be, Talbot-Jones noted that it evolved out of conversations held with the broker’s AR (appointed representative) network, TEn Insurance Services about what it means to sell within a network and about succession planning. Williams was looking to sell her business and considering the route of becoming an AR and so the team reached out to her, with an offer that would allow her to bypass the setup costs and administrative tasks that accompany the traditional AR route.
“So we said you may as well sell to somebody within the TEn network,” he said. “And then we put our heads together and came up with a deal, which probably makes it sound overly simple but in [such cases] simple really is good. Essentially the opportunity came about because we were very open about saying to people that we’d be happy to look at any opportunity. There’s a great northern phrase that Clare [Talbot-Jones, business development manager at Talbot Jones] uses which is ‘shy bairns get nowt’, which basically means if you don’t ask, you don’t get.”
Talbot-Jones paid warm tribute to the work of the TEn network team in helping the deal get across the finish line. They were incredibly supportive, he said, and helped in any way possible. He said he was blown away by the reaction of the wider market as well, and by the amount of support and goodwill that had been displayed towards the firm. It feels like people are being very accommodating, which is particularly appreciated given the firm is at such an early stage on the acquisitive path.
Talbot Jones is currently exploring additional acquisition opportunities, he said, and will have further news to deliver regarding that inorganic side of its ongoing strategic growth. A core focus remains on the organic side of that growth journey, however, and on making the right investments in its people and their professional journey. The business is currently setting out on its second five-year plan and, with all going well, is on track to get to a £1 million GWP mark within the next 12 months or so, while the next step after that will be to get to the £2 million GWP mark.
“Things are really good at the moment,” he said. “And I think the biggest takeaway from this deal is that people are keen to support, keen to work with us and that’s been a great boost for us.”
