Top 50 Brokers 2016: #10 Hastings Insurance Services

Chief executive: Gary Hoffman

Brokerage: £243.4m

Management

Hastings chief executive Gary Hoffman has presided over another year of growth, which has propelled the group’s broking division, Hastings Insurance Services, into the top 10.

Hoffman, who previously ran Northern Rock, is supported by chief financial officer Richard Hoskins.

The broking side of the business is run by retail managing director Tobias van der Meer.

The underwriting part of the business, which includes the group’s Gibraltar-based insurance company Advantage, is headed by Ian Godfrey.

Shareholder and former chairman Neil Utley stepped down from the board in September 2015, shortly before Hastings floated on the London Stock Market. He has since reduced his stake in the company to 6.6% from 7.1%.

Strategy

Hastings’s mission is to be the lowest-cost provider of quality general insurance. As of the first half of 2016, it had 2.2 million live customers and a 6.2% share of the UK personal motor insurance market, up from 5.5% in the first half of 2015.

Hastings pursuit of low prices, combined with its rapid growth, has raised the inevitable question over whether the business model is sustainable. However, Hoffman has insisted that the group is uniquely set up to take advantage of aggregators.

Hastings has invested heavily in pricing, analytics and combating fraud. Advantage, with the backing of its reinsurers, covers 90% of Hastings’s customers. A proportion of the business is fed into its panel of third-party insurers.

By design, the group makes most of its money from the broking part of its business. In the first half of 2016, the broking unit’s operating profit made up 74% of the group total.

Hastings was singled out by investment bank Berenberg as one of the industry’s best-positioned financially to weather any post-Brexit storms.