Rural Insurance, the specialist agricultural insurance business based in Harrogate, has taken on a number of new staff to manage new business growth.
Rural managing director Simon Stevens said that in the last three months (July to Sept) Rural had delivered a near 90% year-on-year growth in new business, as the company seeks to cement it’s position as one of the fastest growing agricultural insurers in the UK market. “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.”
Simon added: “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 iMarket, enabling them to allow them to issue electronic motor cover notes on behalf of Rural.”
Simon 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.”
Simon 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: “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. The introduction of a brand new energised sales team backed by high quality service from our Operations team in Harrogate has clearly paid off in recent months, and in light of our exceptional new business performance during the third quarter, I am delighted with the positive response from our brokers.”