Robert Leigh: How Got You Covered outgrew the family living room

When Robert Leigh established Got You Covered in 2016, the firm’s office was his family home. His first employees worked alongside him in the house, with his wife and three daughters going about their daily lives around them.

It was hardly the conventional beginnings of an insurance broker. But nearly a decade later, all four members of his family work in the business, which has grown to employ 155 people.

Today, Got You Covered has £47.2m in gross written premium (GWP), up 42% year on year, while policies in force have increased by 57% over the same time period to 35,681.

Its growth and service-led approach have also earned industry recognition, with Got You Covered shortlisted for six categories at the 2026 Insurance Times Awards.

For Leigh, the journey from working out of his house to leading a sizeable specialist broker has been one of persistence, learning and, perhaps most importantly, knowing when to let go.

“I was wearing a lot of caps,” he says, reflecting on the early days.

“I was our financial director, I was our head of IT, I was our head of sales, head of customer services, head of renewals and retention.”

But before setting up the business, Leigh had spent years building experience across insurance and financial services.

Finding a gap

Insurance and financial services had always been familiar territory for Leigh. His father worked in the industry and, despite trying not to, Leigh jokes that he ultimately followed in his footsteps, beginning his own career in high street banking before moving into private medical insurance.

He subsequently joined broker Barnett and Barnett in 2004, now known as ICB Group, where he gained experience across sales, account management and marketing, eventually becoming group sales and marketing manager.

It was here that he developed an appreciation for service-led broking.

The business had built its reputation on relationships, rather than competing purely on price. But while dealing with high-net-worth (HNW) customers, Leigh noticed that some personal lines risks, including motorists with convictions or previous claims, fell outside the broker’s appetite.

These customers were referred to specialist brokers, but the feedback was not always positive.

“Sometimes I’d get the feedback that ‘it wasn’t for me’ because the service that they were used to receiving from us at Barnett’s wasn’t [being replicated],” he says.

This made him question whether non-standard personal lines insurance was being underserved.

“I wanted to do it on my own,” he explains.

“We just wouldn’t have been able to compete with mass market direct providers or brokers, so it was absolutely critical that we found a niche that we could be useful in and we could make a difference in.”

Leigh developed a business plan, secured regulatory authorisation and began building an insurer panel. Got You Covered started trading in 2017, initially with two insurance professionals from the local area.

The ambition was to bring a more personal, specialist approach to customers who could struggle to find cover elsewhere.

Within its first year, the team had grown to six, prompting a move into its first office.

“We had six people working from the house and as you can imagine, my wife had had enough of that,” he laughs.

“We had to find our first office.”

Growing with purpose

Got You Covered’s development has not always followed the timeline Leigh originally envisaged.

One of his biggest ambitions was to secure delegated underwriting authority, allowing Got You Covered greater flexibility over the risks it could write. Building insurer confidence, however, took time.

For Leigh, carefully underwriting risks and protecting insurer partners was central to building that confidence.

He says this was made clear from the moment the business recruited its own senior underwriter, adding that protecting insurer partners is “as important as looking after our customers”.

That approach has helped Got You Covered build trust with insurers and establish relationships with two large capacity providers, giving it greater freedom to identify areas of business that can be profitable for insurer partners while supporting its customers.

Over the past year, GWP has risen from £33.2m to £47.2m, while policies in force have increased from 22,703 to 35,681.

Customer retention has improved from around 52% to 62%, while call abandonment has fallen from approximately 13% to 3%. Trustpilot ratings have also increased from 4.4 to 4.7.

Leigh is quick to credit the team behind that progress.

“I’m just lucky to have some really good people,” he says. “That’s what’s done it.”

But rapid growth presents its own challenge. As the business expands, Leigh is conscious that it cannot afford to lose the specialist expertise and personal service that initially differentiated it.

“It’s so important because conceivably you could [lose that expertise], but it’s at the forefront of everything we do,” he says.

Human at heart

Technology has nevertheless played an important role in supporting that expansion.

When a major player withdrew from the premium finance market, Got You Covered used the disruption as an opportunity to develop a solution tailored more closely to its specialist customers.

The broker partnered with a finance provider entering the premium finance market and built its own integrated system, Fusion.

Leigh says it provides greater flexibility for customers struggling to pay, including making it easier to move payment dates or establish payment plans.

The business has also introduced AI-supported call monitoring, enabling its quality team to review every customer call rather than relying on a random sample. Potential issues can then be identified quickly and, where necessary, addressed through refresher training.

Leigh believes this has been instrumental in enabling the business to grow without compromising its standards.

However, he is clear that technology has its limits.

For customers with previous convictions, claims or difficult personal circumstances, understanding the context behind a risk requires more than automated decision-making.

“When something goes wrong, you need a bit of understanding. You need human understanding, you need somebody to empathise,” he says.

“You need a human ear to understand what you’ve been through and how it affected you.”

He believes AI can help handle repetitive administrative tasks, analyse data and support quality assurance, allowing the business to concentrate more heavily on acquiring and serving customers.

But when it comes to the customer relationship itself, his position is straightforward.

“If you’re truly in a pickle, nothing beats a human,” he notes.

Leading the next chapter

As Got You Covered has expanded, Leigh’s own role has had to change.

In the early days, the financial and personal stakes made it difficult to delegate. The business represented everything he and his family had invested and he admits that he could sometimes become too involved in the detail.

Building a senior management team has allowed him to step back from day-to-day responsibilities and concentrate more on the strategic direction of the business.

“I would say that my leadership style now is I really just empower people,” he says. “People who know what they’re doing and they care, I’ll empower them to do their job.”

He also places considerable importance on developing talent internally.

The business has established its own training programme, bringing in people with little or no insurance experience and developing their specialist knowledge.

For Leigh, recruitment is as much about attitude as previous experience.

“If you can find somebody who really cares, who wants to do well, wants to build a career, and has that little bit of hunger and desire to do well, that’s really where we start with people,” he says.

Employees can also benefit from option schemes, while internal progression has allowed people to move from sales into underwriting and management positions.

Looking ahead

Commercial vehicle insurance will sit at the centre of Got You Covered’s next phase of growth.

Although the broker already writes commercial vehicle risks, it has increased its distribution channels and recruited specialist commercial vehicle sales staff and underwriters, with Leigh expecting the area to become a key growth driver over the next 12 to 24 months.

He also sees opportunities in non-standard household insurance, including specialist landlord products and properties affected by risks such as subsidence and flooding.

Further ahead, acquisitions could also play a role. While Leigh says there is nothing specific he can disclose, he sees potential to apply Got You Covered’s model to similar businesses as a way of accelerating growth over the next three to five years.

AI will continue to feature in the business’s development, with early projects already underway, although Leigh is keen to ensure its deployment remains aligned with the broker’s service-led approach.

Nearly 10 years after starting the business from his home, his ambitions remain firmly rooted in the original idea – providing specialist expertise to customers who might otherwise struggle to find the right cover.

The business may now have outgrown the family living room, but Leigh’s emphasis on relationships, both with customers and colleagues, appears unchanged.

While Leigh wants Got You Covered to become a leading name in the specialist market, he is not suggesting the journey is complete.

“We’ve done well, we’re in a good position, but we’re still learning,” he says.

“We want to be better. We still want to enhance, refine and sharpen our understanding of what more we can do for customers.”