New strategy unveiled as broker expands City sales team
Marsh is to follow its recent assault on the Scottish market, with an aggressive drive into the south of England.
The broking giant, which this year has slipped to second place in the Insurance Times Top 50 Brokers ranking, is on a recruitment drive in the region in a bid to grow its market share.
In June, Marsh declared its ambitious aim of capturing the whole of the Scottish market with the appointment of 17 new recruits across its Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen offices.
Marsh has now overhauled its business strategy for the City of London with the recruitment of three sales executives to focus on the area.
John Nicholson, executive director of Marsh's corporate client practice, said the move gave the company a City sales strategy "for the first time".
"We have a lot of Marsh business in the South, but they were referrals from other Marsh units. We now have a sales strategy for the City, and we will recruit more if we can find talented people," he told Insurance Times.
Nicholson added: "We will continue to recruit in the South East and South West. We will be aggressive in the South, as we do not have the market share we would like. We want to be number one or two in these areas."
Nicholson said the company was seeing an increase in the number of brokers who were approaching it from rival companies. He said this included applicants "from big ticket rivals to people coming back from regional brokers".
He said the broker was looking to expand both its risk trading practice, which specialises in commodity products for smaller businesses, and its corporate client practice, which brings in the risk services of other parts of the MMC group.
Nicholson admitted that Marsh's market share in risk trading was "small", but it was "aggressively looking to grow profitability". He said the focus was on "fewer but better" specialist product lines.
Push into Norwich
Norwich-based Marsh Client and Market Services (CMS) has launched a recruitment drive in the region in a bid to become a global centre of excellence. The broker is recruiting 100 skilled staff to underpin its growth as the front-end office base for all Marsh UK offices and its cargo and hull base in New York.
