Bob Screen Insurance

A small broker in the South West asked me to provide them with a review of their business strategy.  This already successful business had 4 distinct sectors of the business:

• Commercial broking;
• Personal lines account;
• A small, single product scheme facility; and
• A building society agency.

From an initial analysis of income, costs, resources and management time, it was clear that there was a significant disparity in the resources employed versus return between the business segments.

Recognising that, at the time, they didn’t have the core commercial lines experience, this major high street broker asked me to develop a commercial insurance strategy for them to enable them to develop into a major commercial player.

Internally you will have some strengths and a few weaknesses.  The market will present some opportunities and well as a number of threats. With your marketing strategy you’ll need to determine how to maximise your strengths to take advantage of opportunities as they arise while looking to minimise your weaknesses and guard against the inevitable threats.

The task is to recognise those influences on your business and build a detailed marketing plan designed to implement the resultant strategy.

Unfortunately, many businesses consider strategy as a one-off job.  Often firms only revisit their strategy when something goes wrong or profits start to fall, rather than consider the positive impact of a more regular review of the business.  As the pace of change increases seemingly exponentially, then being on top of our own strategy is more important than ever.  When was the last time you reviewed your strategy?  Last week, last month, last year, longer?