Interview: David Ross, Towergate

Towergate CEO David Ross talks to Stephanie Denton about how he intends to make his employer the broker rivals love to hate again.

No worries, just happy
Despite all the challenges Ross says: “Actually, this is the happiest I’ve been in my career.”

“Even though there are large chunks of what needs to be done and there are areas that I don’t even understand, I don’t worry at all, because I trust the people I work with completely, and I’m very proud.”

He does admit there are times when he has been overwhelmed but says he can see the end game: “You talk about turnaround – it’s like childbirth. You end up with a beautiful child at the end of the turnaround, but you forget the screaming and the hollering and the name calling that happens in the middle. We’re in the name-calling phase.”

One thing he is keen to highlight is that the broker is not broken. “If we can hold our client base resiliently, from year to year, with a broken infrastructure, just imagine how dangerous we’d be if the infrastructure was working properly,” he asks.

And he adds that he’d rather face this than “the front end of the company falling off a cliff”.

Ross can also see the silver lining to the issues Towergate has faced in recent years: “One could argue that its infrastructure was so complex that that was the very thing that prevented it from being buyable, because anybody who wanted to buy it couldn’t really understand it. So, if anything, it muddled itself up in such a way that it preserved its own independence.”

A bright future
Once the multimillion pound infrastructure overhaul is complete, Ross is confident his broker has a bright future. “Towergate has enormous buying power, and is operating in a community where the market needs a strong Towergate. You can’t just have Marsh and Aon continuing to dominate the landscape to the point where insurance companies turn up to two meetings to get half their premium sorted. We have to be a challenger brand, but we have to be able to buy in bulk and sell individually.

“The great thing about today is that the potential of the business is such a secret to everybody, because people are so obsessed with what needs to be done nobody’s really looking at how dangerous this business could be,” he adds.

But that business might not look the same in five years’ time. “We’re not a selling business,” Ross responds to the question of what is for sale. Towergate did sell Broker Network to Highbridge for £46m recently “but it is important to know obviously we sold it to our own shareholder, so that was tactical and strategic.

“There’s a fine line here, because one could argue that everything’s for sale, but the reality is if we ever sell something it would only be because it just simply doesn’t fit, and there’s no reason for it to be here.”

However, Ross says the brand is underweight in some areas as well: “Towergate has a very formidable business outside the M25. In the London market it’s not really got a presence at all. If you look at Towergate’s penetration out into the UK regional market – how much of that client base could find a suitable home down in London, particularly in the underwriting side or on the wholesale side? You can expect to see some really good stuff from us there. Then, obviously, the next step would be international.”

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