At Narrow Aisle we are recognised world market leaders in the design, manufacture, sale, supply of service, parts and the rental of our very specialist articulated Fork Lift trucks.
With over 40-years trading experience behind us, the business recently went through a management buyout with the introduction of three highly senior, commercial and industry related experienced individuals to replace two of the original founders. As a part of our strategic planning, we recognised the need to ensure that we are working with business partners who are aligned with our future vision and fully equipped to support us in the planned growth of the value of our business. When it came to insurance we wanted to make sure that our longstanding broker relationship would stand up to close scrutiny and future demands. The only way that we could validate this was to talk to another broker, ostensibly to ‘sense check’ our current arrangements.
We bank with Lloyds and they advised us that, throughout the UK, they work closely with Gallagher insurance brokers and so Gallagher seemed like a good place to start. Our rationale was simple, if Lloyds have the pick of the broking market and their due diligence has lead them to choose Gallagher then why complicate matters unnecessarily.
From the first conversation, Gallagher’s business-like approach made it very easy for us to understand that Gallagher had plenty to offer. Their friendly personal approach belied the fact that they are one of the biggest brokers worldwide.
They were really keen to understand all aspects of our business, what we do, what markets we operate in, what issues we have had in the past, what our processes involved, how our growth aspirations might affect our margins and a whole raft of other commercial issues. This was not like our normal insurance broking experience. Although the main topic of discussion was obviously focused on our insurance requirements, it turned into a genuinely focused business analysis.
It was refreshing to explore areas such as the Gallagher Cyber consultancy option, the Risk technical back-up that we could access, encompassing just about every aspect of our risk appetite. Claims management was high on our agenda too and the Gallagher ‘in house’ claims team was an attractive part of the overall proposition with the option for regular meetings and management information updates.
Like all businesses we are interested in the overall cost of our insurance programme as a key part of the overall value proposition. Again, Gallagher impressed us with their broking capability, using the scale of their business to leverage a great deal for us. Even though the general insurance market is going through a tough time, Gallagher were able to negotiate us a deal that saw our premiums significantly reduced and our policy cover widened. We also benefited from lower excesses and Gallagher also included covers that we had not previously considered, such as Crime and Fidelity.
It would have been easy for us to be put off by Gallagher’s global presence because no business wants to be ‘a small fish in a big pond’, but all of our experiences have been positive and, because they are involved in every type of insurance, we have been able to consolidate all of our various associated covers with a single broker, including Credit insurance, Life, Healthcare, and domestic covers.
We started out thinking that we were simply going through an exploratory insurance exercise but the outcome turned out to be very different – we decided not to wait until our next renewal to switch brokers, there seemed little point in waiting.
Gallagher are now part of our support team and we are grateful to Lloyds for the introduction and to the Gallagher team who have helped us to get our ducks in a row, ready for our continued expansion.
