Rural Insurance posts impressive growth results...

Rural Insurance posts impressive growth results and sets its sights on further expansion

Rural Insurance, the specialist agricultural insurer based in Harrogate, has delivered nearly 18% premium growth in its latest financial year, and is on track to double the size of the business within the next three years.

Managing director Simon Stevens said the team had more than doubled its new business compared to its previous year with GWP hitting £5.1m and that overall premium written stood at £23m. Morevoer, in the first two months of trading (April and May) in this financial year, new business had continued to flow in with May 2012 being a record month for the business now, in its 17th year.

He said: “What’s so pleasing is that, as well as seeing growth in new business, we are also seeing retention rates for our key motor and farm combined books holding at around 90%, suggesting our pricing and service propositions are hitting the target. We are also writing many more big ticket policies, which is a new trend for this business.”

Mr Stevens, who joined Rural as MD in March 2011, said that despite NFU’s market dominance, there was still plenty of room for specialists to thrive. “Our aim was to double the size of Rural by 2015 and become a top three player in the market segments we compete in. These results illustrate that we remain firmly on course to achieve our objectives.”

Looking ahead, Mr Stevens said he planned to introduce a range of new products, including an improved equine product, as well as extending Rural’s ability to offer cover against the effects of environmental pollution by farmers. He added: ’We’ve been very pleased with the early reaction to our suite of renewable energy products, which we write in partnership with HSB, and we continue to shape this product - for solar panels and wind turbines - in line with broker feedback.”

Mr Stevens also revealed other plans for the business including introducing broker schemes with a focus on smallholders, and further work on establishing Rural’s brand in the south of England. “We have already grown our headcount by 10% in Harrogate to cope with growth, and now we want to increase the number of brokers we trade regularly with to 200 within the next few months. We are also talking to existing partners, such as Broker Network and Coversure, on how their members can win additional agricultural business.”

Mr Stevens said Rural’s focus on agility had served the business well. “The agricultural insurance market is evolving fast, such as the growing interest in renewable energy insurance products, and we are able to adapt and flex to anticipate those changes.” He made it clear, however, that getting the basics of pricing and service quality right remained his top priority for the next twelve months.