Broker Expo 2026 Countdown: Beyond the balance sheet – what makes a great brokerage today?

Shona Robertson knows the value of keeping an open office door for customers.

She’s had people come in cold and, off the bat, offer a few hundred thousand in business with H&R Insurance Services.

“They literally just walk in off our counter. Now, if we had a locked door, then we just wouldn’t be getting that,” the broker’s partner says.

The hidden cost of efficiency

Roger Gaunt is also an advocate of having deep roots in local communities.

In his view, the antithesis of local broking is having the business moved to national centres of excellence.

The idea is to improve efficiency and give clients access to specialists who would not sit in every branch.

But the Gauntlet executive director says: “I just don’t think that gives the customer the right level of service.”

Instead, local brokers should know about new developments, local geography and all the things that add value to the service.

Local knowledge

They can use this local knowledge to service a wide cross-section of products.

Gaunt explains: “That’s the sort of thing the clients love – that personal knowledge, that little bit of local intuition. You don’t get that from these call centres that are a long way away.”

Robertson sees another efficiency trend taking place: brokers reducing claims teams and outsourcing the work.

She strongly disagrees with this approach, believing H&R’s in-house claims team, with its intimate understanding of customers, is invaluable to its reputation.

“That’s what brings you your goodwill. That’s what creates the good experience. It can bring clients back.”

Value you can’t measure

What makes a great brokerage often consists of things that are difficult to measure on a balance sheet – customer service among them.

Neal Lumb, group sales and marketing director at Verlingue, explains it introduced a rule for staff to call first on anything complex or ambiguous.

He says clients fed back that ‘in a world where it’s getting more impersonal. It’s really nice that you guys call and then back it up in writing’.

Building this type of close relationship with the customer is so important in being a great broker, says Gaunt.

“When a customer’s comfortable, they’re probably more likely to open up, to talk, to engage, and actually that develops the long-term relationship. And so they are more likely to renew.”

Culture eats strategy

One of the biggest factors in what makes a great brokerage, which is hard to define in numbers, is its people and culture.

John Warburton, CEO of Konsileo, says: “In broking, value is created at the front line. It’s the broker, sitting with a client, who understands the risk and earns the trust. Everything else in the organisation exists to support that, or it shouldn’t exist at all.”

For Warburton, that means putting power in the hands of the broker.

“The job isn’t to control brokers from the centre. It’s to empower and support real brokers to do what they already know how to do.”

At Verlingue, that emphasis on people extends to giving staff a clear vision of their role and career path.

The broker has more than 30 apprentices among its 220 staff, with clear opportunities for progression.

Lumb says: “What it enables us to do is get them into our way of thinking, get them into our culture, get them to understand that, look, you’re going to have a great career here.”

No short-term financial horizons

As a family-owned business, Lumb says Verlingue is also not dictated by short-term financial horizons. Staff can feel part of a ‘great legacy’.

“That is one of the key cultural differences for us in being independent rather than PE-owned.”

Gaunt makes a similar point when asked what he would never cut when looking at the spreadsheet. He doesn’t hesitate: staff training and education.

“That is part of the finances that just does not need to be touched.”

Every member of staff, he believes, should be encouraged to study, take their insurance qualifications and build a genuine career path – more skilled work, better reward and a clear route forward.

“It’s quite a cliché to say look after your staff and they’ll look after your customers. But it really is the piece that doesn’t need to be cut out of the equation.”

Service first, finances follow

Warburton concludes that having the right culture and customer service is the bedrock for a healthy balance sheet.

“Financial performance follows from getting this right; it doesn’t come first. A brokerage that’s only managing its P&L is managing the symptom.

”The ones building lasting value are investing in the front line, the culture around it and the technology underneath, because that’s where the value actually comes from.”

Join the debate: Sign up to attend the Broker Expo on 8 October at the Birmingham NEC

The session ‘Beyond the balance sheet – what makes a great brokerage today?’ takes place at 11:00am – 11:30am on the C-Suite stage