Opinion: Regional broker market poised to ‘outpace growth’ in London

Speaking to Drazen Jaksic, chief executive at Zurich UK, at the end of 2025, he told me that his “biggest learning” after a year in office was related to the insurer’s regional business.

He explained: “You realise how different [the] requirements for service are for SME and mid-market [customers] in the regions, how much faster it needs to be. For me, that was the biggest learning because it’s so different [to the] corporate market in London.”

Jaksic’s view mirrors a widely held status quo in the broker market of where certain lines are drawn in the sand between what UK general insurance (UKGI) can expect from the London market versus what it can expect from the regional broker market.

In broad brush strokes, Daniel Lloyd-John – chief executive at Manchester-based broker Broadway Insurance Partners – told me that London offers “access to global markets, prestige and large deal economics”, with business “driven by larger, single placements, one off policies [and] fee-based advisory services”.

In comparison, the regional broker market has traditionally been centred around “relationship driven retention” across a “higher volume of SME and regional commercial placements”. Brokers outside of the Square Mile typically take advantage of “loyal regional client relationships, scalability [opportunities] and increasing digital capability”, he added.

However, post-2019, a sea change in the relationship between London and the regions has been taking place.

According to Lloyd-John, insurers are increasingly recognising that regional brokers are “more entrepreneurial in their thinking” by putting in place a “beefed up” regional presence across certain cities, such as Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, and “moving complex specialists out of London” – rather than maintaining the prior rhetoric that middle and front office roles are London-based, while less customer-centric back office functionality is delivered from the regions.

This “growing specialist pool” in the UK’s regions presents an important “opportunity for brokers and insurers” to “stay relevant” for local clientele and bolster relationship led retention – especially as regional brokers have the ability “to leverage community differently” – Lloyd-John continued.

He said: “If you look at the private equity community, the investor community, the international money coming into the industry, it isn’t just piling into London. It is betting on a more accelerated growth, which is [happening] in key regional marketplaces. Could [regional growth] outpace growth in London? It could outpace it – but not outsize it.”

Ian McKinney, corporate director at Verlingue UK – who set up the broker’s Midlands office in Birmingham three years ago – agreed that certain regions outside of London were becoming more intrinsic insurance trading hubs, but he noted that it was a “shame” that insurers no longer had “an office in every city”.

At the very least, he feels that insurers should have a minimum of one homeworker located in each city, rather than just clustered in geographical hubs, to facilitate the face-to-face conversations that drive the “best outcomes” for clients and empower supportive “cross pollination” conversations between local businesses that have been connected by a common broker relationship.

On the same team

Although excited by the blossoming prominence and tangible growth of the regional broker market, both Lloyd-John and McKinney acknowledge that London is “in a league of its own” in terms of being “a highly competitive global marketplace” that operates as the UK’s “international headquarters”.

For them, the London and regional broker scenes have to work together in “complementary roles” if UKGI is to flourish. McKinney noted: “We should see [London] as an asset and [it] should see [the regional market] as an asset”.

Lloyd-John added: “London remains the global specialty capital, anchored by Lloyd’s and international capital flows, but key regional markets represent a highly scalable and commercially focused opportunity – meaning cost efficiencies, strong client relationships and growing technical capability.

“So, rather than directly competing against each other, the two markets – in my opinion – operate in a tiered but interconnected system [that is] not at the detriment to the other. [This is] why many brokers maintain footprints in both [markets], to capture the advantages of each.”

The insurance sector is clearly diversifying outside of its London safety net and historic home. While the capital may be the industry’s hard-working frontman on a global stage, the broad network of regional firms underpinning sector-wide success must not be undervalued – or underestimated.