Rural Insurance, the agricultural insurance arm of UK General, is planning "aggressive growth" and wants to become a top five player in the sector within five years.

Rural Insurance managing director Simon Stevens said the firm had seen almost £1m new business GWP in the last three months, around a 140% increase on 2010.

“Our ambition is to grow our overall market share to 5% and become a top five player within three to five years,” he added.

"We are expecting the competition to respond, but our service promise has clearly paid off in recent months, and I am delighted with the positive response from our brokers.”