Interview: David Ross, Towergate

Interview: David Ross, Towergate - page 2

Page 2
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Interview: David Ross, Towergate

Interview: David Ross, Towergate - page 2

Interview: David Ross, Towergate - page 3

Interview: David Ross, Towergate - page 4

David Ross on...

Regulation: It’s a very difficult role for them. It’s like being a referee in a football match, isn’t it? The job is to be a conscience for the industry, but without necessarily having to dominate its activity. You have to work very hard to be the most professional business you can, and allow compliance, governance and good behaviour to come on the back of being extremely professional, rather than trying to digest and live your life by the rulebook.

Insurance premium tax: IPT looks like a really soft, easy target for the government. But you can’t just levy a tax and expect either the brokers or carriers [to absorb it], because we’re all struggling to make ends meet as it is. If you compare [what has happened with insurance] to what’s happening in the banking industry and how it brought governments to the brink, we have to work very closely with government to make sure it understands that we have to be here for the rainy day – excuse the pun.

The Marsh/Jelf deal: I was really disappointed to see that one go. I was with Chris Jelf [founder, Jelf], and I said to him, please don’t sell your company while I’m out in the garden. Then when I met with Dan Glaser [president and CEO, Marsh & McLennan Companies], who’s a great friend of mine, I said to him: “I notice you had to wait for me to be in the garden to get a deal done.”

Ross feels strongly that insurance is a people-driven business and during the course of a 90-minute interview, ‘people’ are mentioned 121 times. “People. It’s the only thing that matters. You have to get your people right. You have to listen to them and respond to their needs.”

According to Ross, a year ago 43% of the headcount was leaving but the workforce has stabilised now. Following his appointment, Adrian Brown, Mark Mugge, Janice Deakin and Sarah Delgarno also jumped the AJG ship to join him as respectively CEO of underwriting and chief operating officer, chief financial officer, CEO of insurance broking, and chief risk officer. “The quality of the people that have arrived into the organisation in the last six months is outstanding but the people we have to pay tribute to are the ones that stuck it out when things were really, really bad.”

He warns other firms they should be “watching with an air of trepidation, because this is a business that could become a really attractive lightning rod for very good people to leave other companies to join” and confirms more teams will be joining the firm in the not too distant future.

Staff aside, Ross admits there are many other issues in his challenger broker that need to be fixed before he’ll be knocking on those competitors’ doors. “Loads of people have told me that the mantra of the firm was, ‘we’re going to buy and build, and integration will be someone else’s problem’. Arriving in the company, realising that I’m the ‘someone else’ is quite something.”

We have nine projects we’re working on in the company. They’re not things that we, as a leadership team, have decided we’re going to impose on the business. They’re the nine things the workforce told us they care about the most. Right now, we are working on a £23.5m project, and that is to operate all the essential IT infrastructure in the country.”

Ross has also declared that he will be repaying insurers as the firm exits upfront commission deals. “There was a lot of behaviour within the group in the last few years, in terms of upfront deals and stuff like that, that just wasn’t that healthy, for insurance companies as well as for Towergate. We’re not looking to use the company’s buying power to go back to the bad old days of what the company was doing at the peak of its history. The critical thing for us is we want to make sure that we’re operating on a level playing field with our peers, and Towergate has weakened its negotiating position substantially because of what it’s been through.”

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