With a well-deserved reputation for promoting from within (out of a branch of 40 employees, 10 have received promotions within the past 12 months!), opportunities to join the Chelmsford office of this global broker in such a senior position are few and far between.
Indeed, it is as a result of numerous promotions, coupled with members of the team being groomed for positions elsewhere in the group, that the need has arisen for an Account Director to join the team in a senior capacity.
Here, you will inherit a longstanding and secure portfolio of corporate clients generating up to circa £1M income, with individual clients paying fees from £50K-£200K. The exact make-up of the portfolio can be tweaked to suit your skills, experiences and ambitions, but it is likely to include clients from a range of sectors such as Tech, Life Sciences, Manufacturing and Hospitality.
Aided with the support of a dedicated team of Account Handlers, you will be responsible for the management and retention of this portfolio. You will ensure that your clients’ insurance programmes reflect their appetite for risk and, where exposures exist, you will provide solutions that can comprehensively mitigate these. In addition, as a senior member of the team, you will be responsible for providing both formal and ad hoc support to less-experienced colleagues; for example, you may help Corporate Account Executives with their programme design, or accompany them to renewal meetings. As you will be working in close conjunction with the Branch MD, you will also get the opportunity to influence the future direction of the branch and help with insurer relations etc.
Whilst you will be dealing with large corporate clients, you will be truly engrained within their businesses; typically, you will enjoy dealing directly with company secretaries and FD’s, as opposed to in-house insurance teams. As such, employees within this team really enjoy the heightened level of exposure and involvement that they have with their portfolio.
It is essential that you have experience as an Account Director, or are currently a Corporate Account Executive and confident in your ability to step up slightly in your responsibilities. As one would expect, you must be au fait with all common commercial covers. Whilst it is not essential that you have dealt with similar, six-figure income risks, you must have dealt with corporate risks paying fees over £50K, and ideally have dealt with global programmes too.
You should be an articulate and polished communicator with strong stakeholder management skills, and able to build rapport with clients that have a sophisticated approach to managing risk. You must also be a superb ‘internal networker’, who is able to develop an understanding of this broker’s full suite of products and put clients in touch with colleagues from specialist teams (Credit Insurance, Risk Management, Employee Benefits etc.) to maximise revenue.
This role is attached to the Chelmsford office, but as this broker is a massive advocate of flexible-working and only expects you in the office once every week or two, this role will surely appeal to senior insurance professionals based across Essex, Kent, London and the wider East Anglia region.
As well as a myriad of opportunities for progression (other colleagues have gone into managerial and sales roles, or have become attached to other offices, UK-wide and globally), you will benefit from a fantastic basic salary, bonus, car allowance, market-leading ‘flexible benefits’ package, and one of the most generous pension arrangements in the industry.
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