Evolving opinion

For the past four years, Fortis has been engaged in a process of gradually reinventing itself. The desire to broaden its appeal from a well-regarded motor insurer has seen Fortis pull off some big corporate affinity deals, such as the £90m Age Concern schemes book, Holiday Extras travel business, and other sizeable wins with building societies in that time.

Its efforts to scale its relatively stable agency base, by increasing its personal and commercial product offerings, have been less headline grabbing. However, the resource being pumped into broker support that has accompanied Fortis' foray into new business areas has been getting a big tick from brokers lately. In the last Professional Broking Sentiment Survey, published in April, Fortis was rated second-best insurer for service by brokers, a result probably reflective of the fact that it is in the process of doubling its sales force, as Chris Dobson, distribution director, explains: "Recruitment will conclude in June when we will have a sales force of 12. We have correspondingly segmented the UK into 12 districts for which each one will be responsible. Those in charge of districts in the North will report to Steve Berry, while those in the South will report to James Astle, who joins us from Zurich."

Dobson adds the increased effort is to support provincial brokers - as the insurer's heartland - and where its success has come from. Dobson continues: "By segmenting the UK into 12 parts this will allow brokers the opportunity to have a face-to-face relationship with the account executives, purely because it helps us and it helps brokers. We don't want to keep our brokers at arm's length via a call centre, and we don't operate a preferred partner hierarchy because all our brokers are important to us."

Dobson says the initial feedback about the broker-facing changes has been good and that other barometers, such as PB's Sentiment Survey, confirm a healthy reception so far. In terms of why Fortis has been able to not only compete but see off other much larger insurers in PB's Sentiment Survey, Dobson says: "I wouldn't say being smaller than some competitors makes us more entrepreneurial necessarily but the fact that we don't have the baggage of some - such as the legacy systems - and that everything is on one platform creates some obvious advantages."

Commercial focus

Fortis also announced in April that is was joining imarket, which will no doubt help with its commercial products push.

On that note, the insurer plans to build on the consecutive enhancements of its product range in recent years with a mid-net-worth policy, due to appear by quarter three. On the commercial side, Fortis is also investigating the electronics industry as a sector it wants to break into and, in a similar way to its investigations into the leisure industry this time last year, aims to have an offering on the table by the year end.

Also on the commercial side, Fortis is looking to attract the larger brokers with predominantly commercial books. "Most brokers that use us for commercial products do so in the main for small to medium-sized enterprise package products. However, as we continue to broaden our product range we have an increased appetite for larger risks," Dobson says, adding that Fortis is working to deliver such an offering in 2008.

All of which begs the question - how many new brokers does Fortis hope this increased effort with products and service will attract? "We deal with approximately 2400 high street or community brokers currently," Dobson answers. "Last year we took on 84 additional brokers and hope to do roughly the same again this year. And by working with brokers and engaging with them to provide products that support them we would like to think 3000 is a feasible target."

Other efforts in support of this expansion include the revamp of Fortis' broker forums, traditionally held at its Eastleigh or Gloucester branches. Dobson explains: "Not all of our brokers wanted to travel to these locations. Given that almost half of our brokers are along the M62 corridor or in the North we have started to do regional road shows to engage with brokers where they are. There brokers could discuss issues with senior staff and we also had three underwriters and other key personnel."

The insurer is also keen to keep the momentum with non-motor products as the ones it wants to grow at the faster rate. Last year, Fortis wrote £668m in gross written premium, of which £55m to £60m was commercial business. However, despite much effort being invested to ramp up its commercial proposition, Dobson says: "We want to ensure our commercial account grows at a faster rate than personal lines but that won't be at the expense of personal lines. That will always be the dominant part of our portfolio and we will not get to a point where 50% of our book is personal and 50% is commercial."

From a personal point of view, Dobson, who joined from Royal and SunAlliance in 2004, says he has enjoyed being able to work more closely with his co-directors. Possibly alluding to his experiences at larger organisations where he has worked, he added: "You get to have a voice at the table and can influence strategy and the structure is very flat." Dobson concludes: "In the time I've been here it has been great to see opinion of Fortis evolve, as it was very much seen as a small, niche insurer not so long ago. However, it had a solid broker base that was very scalable and now that 'motor only' view is changing in line with our efforts to broaden our appeal and to support brokers."

"This didn't involve any radical departure from our core strategy - brokers are our customers and we have no direct brand."