Fee and commission income (2002): £39.4m

Pre-tax profit (2002): £5.3m

Address:
Towergate House
St Leonard's Road,
Maidstone, Kent, ME16 OLS.

Tel: 01622 754 75 ...

Fee and commission income (2002): £39.4m

Pre-tax profit (2002): £5.3m

Address:
Towergate House
St Leonard's Road,
Maidstone, Kent, ME16 OLS.

Tel: 01622 754 754

Fax: 01622 754 999

Email: peter.cullum@ towergate.co.uk

Website: www.towergate.co.uk

Year established: 1997

History: Towergate was created by its founders to carry out a strategy of acquiring specialist underwriting agencies in the UK. The founders of the company are ex-insurance company staff and the tactical intention was to apply the business disciplines learnt in an insurance company background to the, often, less formal environment of an underwriting agency. The five years since the launch have proved the point. Towergate has acquired 30 companies and portfolios and now writes £203m gross written premium and has become the leading underwriting agency group for specialist products in the UK. Its product range is firmly focused on the provision of specialist insurance to customers in niche groups. The group provides in excess of 50 products to insurance brokers and intermediaries and, in many cases, is the dominant player in the field.

Major shareholders: Peter Cullum, Paul Ryder, Tony Proverbs.

Main lines of business: General insurance underwriting.

Subsidiary companies: 30

Number of UK employees: 550

Chief officer: Peter Cullum, chief executive

Biography: Peter Cullum started his career with Commercial Union and Royal before moving to Excess Insurance (soon to become ITT London and Edinburgh) as marketing director. Cullum has held senior management positions in marketing after obtaining his MSc in Risk Management from City University Business School in 1975. In 1991 he was headhunted to re-engineer Economic Insurance. This he did successfully, leading to the management buyout of Economic from its ailing parent, Hafnia for £6.5m.

In 1996, Economic was sold by its management to Hiscox. In 1997, Towergate Underwriting Group was created. As the major shareholder, Cullum employs nearly 600 staff and writes premiums in excess of £200m. In April 2002 Cullum recruited Andy Homer, formerly chief executive at AXA, and joined forces with Kenny Maciver, ex-chief executive of Groupama, and Tony Proverbs to create The Folgate Partnership. After only 12 months, Folgate is poised to become the largest independently-owned intermediary in the UK by the end of 2003. Cullum is a well known figure in the industry, a Fellow of the Institute of Insurance and an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has contributed to numerous management conferences and written many articles for the technical press.

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