Broking Success: Ian Evans, DPI – from TV to insurance

Before insurance you worked in the television industry for three years, how did that come about?

I did media at university. I was always very much into music and home DJ-ing. I used to work for some music production companies. If you look at the period of time [2001-2004], it was when all the super clubs were floating around. We used to do all the outside broadcasts, and over in Ibiza I did some pop music programmes and moved on to some fly on the wall documentaries and things of that nature.

How did the switch to insurance happen?

It [TV] is really enjoyable work, but it’s short-term contracts, you might get a contract for three to six months, and then you’d be out of a job and trying to find another. Those interim periods are where insurance got me.

What did you know about insurance?

My father had his own insurance broker, so it was in the family. My brothers were working [as an AR of] BGI Insurance at the time, and building a book of commercial business. We were always running our own marketing, growth and customer base.

They, my two brothers, had only been going for a very short period when I joined them, with a standing start of zero GWP. We were just picking up the telephone and cold calling customers to try and get opportunities to quote. It was lots of long, long, hard weeks and years of effort.

Then what happened in 2016?

Between the three of us we got it to a critical size, where it was large enough to justify authorisation in its own right, that’s how DPI started. We were probably £2m GWP. We brought some staff in, [including] Phil Yorke, as FD, and we just became a lot more organised, and we really kicked on.

How far have you grown?

In that 10-year period we’ve got better and better. We’ve hit 20% growth year-on-year for the past five years straight.

What have been the foundations of the growth? 

Really well-trained staff who can deliver specialist advice and support to the customers.

Our training and internal processes are extremely strict, and so is our fact find processes. All of the staff are at a minimum CII [qualified], with many of them ACII. We have an internal compliance governance director, and we do lots of files checks and ongoing training. Everybody has specific product training, and they’re not allowed to deal with any particular product unless they’ve had the full training on it.

The service delivery is we review every client every year. All the clients get a renewal exec and a conversation. We review the sums insured, the business activities, all their needs. We keep on top of it, and we’re at the end of the phone, we’re not just churning renewals out without conversations. 

What else has helped?

In terms of the growth, it was the marketing. We always knew that we could offer a really good service. It was getting the opportunity that sometimes was the challenge. We moved into online marketing to generate the leads. We get volume coming through, and we’re able to demonstrate our skills to the SME customer base, they appreciate it.

[We use] organic searches, pay per click, we actually sometimes get inquiries where people have found us via ChatGPT. You’d be foolish to ignore the fact that is some of the trajectory that marketing seems to go in. It’s an area we’re working on at the moment, we’re trying to diversify into making sure our marketing ticks the boxes of ChatGPT. 

Are all your customers SMEs? 

We’re an SME broker, we resonate [with clients] because we’re a family-owned brokerage. We have some clients who might turn over £100m, but the majority are up to about £10m. 

We operate nationally. Our USP is we try to provide over the telephone as close to the traditional broker service of somebody coming and actually seeing you at your premises.

About 20% of the new business revenue typically comes from recommendations, so we’d like to think that’s a reflection of the good service that customers are happy. 

Do you have a track record of bringing in apprentices?

Absolutely. It’s probably been our biggest success. I don’t think I’d be alone in the broking community if I said recruitment is a challenge.

Recognising that many years ago we started our own apprenticeship scheme. We typically take on two each year. They have an 18-month training programme, through the CII coupled with our own internal programme. By the end they’re pretty well-educated brokers. We have a very strong relationship with the local college and we only take A-level graduates A to C. These are bright young people, and they can progress very quickly. Some 50% of our workforce is through that apprenticeship programme.

How many of the apprentices have you kept?

Fingers crossed, we’ve held on to all of them. What you have to do, though, is maintain that journey. If you’re not meeting the expectations of your staff in terms of their growth on an ongoing basis, they might look elsewhere. That journey doesn’t stop at the end of an 18 month apprenticeship, quite a few of our apprentices are now managers, and maybe one day one of them might be a director. We’re continually aligning the company’s growth with the ambitions of the workforce. 

Are there any areas you are keen for DPI to expand into?

Online retailers can sometimes have requirements [across] imports, exports, websites, cyber. There certainly might be an opportunity for growth there. We’ll stick to our core products of SME insurance, manufacturers, wholesalers, property, consultants, and PI, and all those sorts of trades. It’s a big marketplace, and it’s one we’re very familiar with.

Which insurers do you work with? 

We have a broad panel of insurers. That’s one of the areas where we can differentiate, maybe some of the larger brokers have specific placement strategies that might tie their hands. If we have a client with a certain want or need, we are able to look across the market at niche MGAs or whatever is required. 

How do you find insurer service? 

We’ve got some great relationships with the composites and the support can be fantastic. The service has improved across the board over recent times. Can you still encounter a lack of experience in a computer says no attitude with some of the live chats? Yeah, you can, but they’re very large organisations, and it’s possibly slightly unrealistic to expect perfection across the board.

We also tend to find that the service and support of underwriting agencies can be good. They have to operate in niche areas and pick up where the composites don’t want to deal.

We remain ambitious brokers, to grow and deliver that service to the customers. You’re never going to perform well in this industry if your customers aren’t central to what you do.

Ian Evans, DPI Insurance

Do you mainly etrade on Acturis or through insurer extranets? 

Our initial standpoint is to look to use Acturis. But our guys are pretty experienced. They know, when they’ve done a fact find or carried out a review with a client, whether a risk is suitable for Acturis and the composites, or whether the trade activities are going to push it outside. Just through the wealth of experience [the team] knows which channels to push the business down that’s going to get the best outcomes. 

What are the evolving risks in the industry?

The main risk to customers is apathy and poor service from their existing broker. What we find when we’re going into the market and acquiring new business is that customers haven’t had their requirements reviewed. They may not have been advised about the correct basis to set their sums insured, they might be subject to policy conditions that they don’t know about or can’t comply with. Basic traditional broking values can be missing on a lot of occasions.

Do you get approached by consolidators looking to buy you? 

Yeah, we’re batting them off consistently. It’s not on the DPI agenda at the moment, that’s for sure. 

What about buying another business? 

On one occasion there was a broker that went into liquidation, and we picked up the renewal rights of those clients, but it was very small. Outside of that, we haven’t done an acquisition. We’ve been growing by 20% year-in-year-out. Why compete in that acquisition area? We can acquire it organically.

Would you open another office to cope with the growth? 

We have quite a few remote workers and we’ve still got some capacity in the building. But it’s a fair question. We’re not a million miles away from a tipping point. If we continue to maintain our growth trajectory, more office space potentially would be on the cards. 

Our business is primarily 90%-99% telephone based, so really the one location and the one hub works the best. 

Do you feel broker regulation is over-bearing?

It’s settled down. But we question if fair value assessment is genuinely achieving the desired outcome. It puts quite a heavy administrative burden on brokers, and I question how many products have ever been removed from the market as a result. It takes up a huge amount of time for my governance director, and I’m not so sure what value that’s delivered to the end customer. 

Any regulation or compliance that improves customer outcomes, then we’re all for it. But if we’re drowning in administration for administration’s sake, that’s not helping the customer, it’s not delivering a better outcome. It takes up time for a broker, where I feel it could be directed in a more productive manner. 

Are you on track for 20% growth this year?

In our current financial year, which ends 31 August, we’re tracking at 18%. I won’t deny market conditions have been a bit of a headwind – reducing premiums and an increase in, unfortunately, company failures and liquidations which you can’t really do anything about from a broker’s perspective.

The softening market has been a good opportunity for DPI to look in the mirror and reflect on what it can do better and do more of. To maintain growth you’ve got to sell more products and the renewals department certainly is selling more to our existing customer base. It’s good that they [customers] are seeing the value in that. 

If the market is [hardening] you’ve got that wind in your sails. Tougher economic trading conditions force you to really look hard at your systems and processes. 

What are the longer term goals?

Perpetually 20% [but] it’s 20% of a bigger figure, so it gets continually more difficult to achieve. That’s the target, that’s the carrot we dangle in front of ourselves.

Finally, if you could meet yourself when you worked in TV, would you advise going into the insurance sector?

Absolutely. It certainly had its challenges. But there’s some great people in insurance. It’s been an enjoyable journey. 

We remain ambitious brokers, to grow and deliver that service to the customers. You’re never going to perform well in this industry if your customers aren’t central to what you do.

If you’re not at the races delivering on all fronts, then you’re not going to succeed. We keep doing our level best to make sure our service standards are high, deliver good outcomes for the customers.

I always say to the staff, ‘listen, there will be bumps in the road as you go along, okay, some months might not be as positive as others, but on the law of large numbers, if we keep doing the right things well, consistently delivering that service, being educated, keeping customers central [then] over time, it will even out, and the trajectory will be upward’.

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