“We can offer an excellent package to our clients with a combination of competitive prices and personal service.”

Challenging and ever-changing market conditions (including product & cover limitations), combined with a greater number of new clients has produced increased workloads. To ensure that we continue to comprehensively research the best products and provide the best service for our clients, our A-One family needed to grow.

As a result of our significant growth, an extra 24 jobs have been created since January 2020, increasing the total workforce to over 150 staff.

These jobs are not just at our head office in Ringwood, but new recruits have been added throughout the group at our 10 different locations, with the vast majority being commercial account handlers and sales roles.

We have seen strong growth in commercial and property owners’ insurance but there has also been significant expansion across cyber, marine, personal insurances and Private medical insurance too.

Our Group Operations Director, Sarah Smith said: “Despite the effects of the pandemic over the past two years, we have continued to see strong growth as we have continued to win business from our competitors. We truly believe this is because of our ability to solve problems for clients that other brokers do not have the skill set to be able to do.

“There has been a lot of talk about the difficulties of recruiting people since the restrictions of the pandemic were relaxed. We have seen those difficulties too, but we have worked hard to make A-One a great place to work and the whole package that we have to offer is an attractive one for applicants.

“We are delighted that we have created 24 new jobs across the group. Seeing our A-One family grow over the past two years has been a proud achievement for us.”

Sarah added: “The insurance sector continues to be a challenging one – commercial clients are seeing some of their premiums increase due to a rise in the costs of claims, commonly as a result of delays with supply chains combined with labor and legal fee increases. Unfortunately, these have increased quite significantly in recent months as a direct result of global issues and the cost-of-living crisis.

“We continue to work closely and maintain the excellent relationships that we have with insurers. This means that we can offer an excellent package to our clients with a combination of competitive prices and personal service. It is important for us to minimise the impact of changes to policies and premiums wherever possible. It’s who we are and what we stand for. We focus on client risk management and present suitability statements to insurers based on the information we have obtained from our clients. We want to talk to our clients; we want to build a relationship with them so that we understand who they are and what they need. We ask questions to make sure we can provide accurate information to insurers, which presents our clients in the best light possible. We aren’t led by the standard responses on a computer system. Clients love this about us, and our personal service is what sets us apart from the rest. That’s why we often welcome new clients who have become disillusioned with the support they have received elsewhere.”

Expansion and growth is predicted to continue at A-One as the group develops new initiatives for clients to support them in finding the most appropriate insurance portfolios to meet their needs.