Simon Levett joined multi award-winning independent brokers Darwin Clayton 25 years ago. Today he is assistant director of IT and finance for the 45-strong business, working out of their Tunbridge Wells head office. He found a few minutes to share his insights and experience…
What makes your business special?
At Darwin Clayton we’re an independent, family-owned business – and it feels like a family, too.
We specialise in tailored insurance products for sectors such as cleaning, security and shopfitting, to name just a few.
With our knowledge of the sectors we work in, we are
able to provide innovative insurance solutions – it’s part of our ethos to be innovative in what we do and how we do it. It’s easy to go and present a new idea to the board, talk it through and work out what’s best to do. The pandemic actually highlighted for us how well up with the curve we were – we grew the business while teams were locked down at home.
I think what makes us special is how we look after our clients and the technical knowledge of our teams. We’re ready to help clients wherever and whenever they need us.
We’ve had quite a run of winning awards in recent years – including last year for Commercial Lines Broker of the Year at the British Insurance Awards and Schemes Broker of the Year at the Insurance Age UK Broker Awards. These aren’t things that you win just for being in the market – you’ve got to prove who you are, what you do and why you do it.
What’s the link with Close Brothers Premium Finance?
We’ve been with Close for the best part of 30 years – and personally, I’ve worked with our sales manager Stuart also for quite some time. As a working relationship, it’s been fantastic – they’re always so approachable. When you’ve got a good product, a good team behind it and an appetite for innovation, it makes things better for everyone.
We’ve looked several times at other competitors in the market, but have always opted to stay where we are. It makes commercial sense for us to keep our business where it is.
What has worked well?
They’ve grown the services that they offer, which is great for us and fits nicely with what we do. And they’ve proved to be innovative, too, which also slots in with our ethos. They are always looking for another way, a better way of doing things – to make things better for everybody.
Within the insurance market, if you don’t stay on top of the changes that are happening in the industries that you look after, and then innovate within your product, then you can quickly end up with a product that isn’t fit for purpose. That’s something we pride ourselves on – maintaining fantastic products for the schemes and market sectors that we look after. And we see that approach reflected in Close Brothers.
Payment Services is the innovation that’s grabbed us in the past couple of years. I think it’s revolutionary, and it made perfect sense to me and my team when we saw it for the first time.
And there are other important aspects, too. Close are competitive in terms of rate and deal. Their i-prompt core system is stable and always available. We get regular assistance with documenting changes in compliance. And their customer service is knowledgeable and ready to help.
It sounds like a strong working relationship…
It’s important for us as a business to know that they’re there if we need them, that we can rely on them. My sales manager will do everything to get a case across the line if it’s urgent or there are bumps in the road. I know he’s there for us, and he also comes to see us regularly. They’re proactive, too. So, for example, we can go to them with updates or changes we would like to see and they’ll take it away and then come back and say: “We’ve spoken to IT, we’ve run it through and this one’s a great idea – we’re going to put that in. But this one’s not – and this is why.”
I have to say that I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending them to another broker. And if we were at a CBPF event, I would definitely grab hold of one or two people we work with and thoroughly embarrass them by expressing how well they look after us – how they make us feel like we’re part of their business.
What do you see as the benefits of offering premium finance to your clients?
Premium finance gives flexibility, gives us options. And it gives the client options as well – it makes choosing more personal for them. They have their options and they can make their own decision.
One size does not fit all – the insurance product has got to fit, got to be moulded into what the client needs, what their individual circumstances require. Having premium finance in the wings allows us to provide another option to make it easy.
Money has never been the easiest thing for most people to talk about, whether you are the client or the broker. Premium Finance gives us an option we know we can rely on – and that the customer can rely on, too.
We had a great CBPF training session that summed it up brilliantly – it was all about the idea that you don’t sell finance, you offer it. You show its benefits to the client and you make it available. And then, ultimately, it’s the client’s decision.
And the benefits to your business of premium finance?
It means we’re not having to go through what some customers would perceive as a sales pitch. Instead, we can concentrate on what to most of my colleagues is more important than money – the actual insurance cover to the client. Because the finance side of it is taking care of itself.
As far as the business itself is concerned, and particularly since Payment Services came in, we’ve seen a reduction in our aged debt. The majority of our premiums are now settled between zero and 45 days. Very little goes past that, which is incredible.