Broking Success: Moving forward and storing up success

Why was the broker set up?

Basil Fry was managing director of an insurance broker in the City who got disillusioned. He literally came home one night and decided that he was going to set up from a table in the shed in the garden. And that’s what he did back in 1970. He had a young-ish son Chris who joined and they really did quite well through the seventies.

Basil had been working for the like of Pickfords and other prominent removal contractors through the fifties and sixties as an insurance consultant who was already consulting to the British Association of Removers. The specialism was present from day one.

When did you join?

My brother Philip was appointed a director in 1986. Basil by this was very near or had retired. I joined the company in September 2001.

What had you been doing previously?

I did a degree in Town Planning including a year at Dorset County Council and finished in 1995 then I went to teach tennis in America for five months. When I got back, I didn’t really know what to do. I joined a graduate management programme at high-end shoe retailer Russell & Bromley and then started to run some of their stores. My brother said ‘I want you to join Basil Fry and work on our marketing’. We had about 12 staff. I took a £10,000 pay cut to join but I’m pleased I did.

How big was it then?

I imagine it was £6m-£7m at that point. You come into the professional environment needing to learn very quickly. We weren’t of the sort of size where I could just concentrate on sales and marketing. I learned by working for Philip. I was his account exec. I spent some time in claims as well.

How did it evolve from there?

In 2007 Philip and I had the opportunity to buy the business. It would have been £10m GWP max. Chris had 50% of the shares at the time, his brother-in-law had 20% and Philip had 30%. Philip headed up the MBO and we bought them out. He had 57.5% and I had 27.5%. From 2007 to 2017 Philip and I ran the business together with another couple of directors and in 2017 I bought Phillip’s shares and became managing director. It was £15m GWP then.

So you own 100% now?

No, I don’t. I gave half of it away. From 2001 I was responsible for recruitment. I was looking out for people and coaching them and bringing them on. Over the years we have kind of built up this sort of trivial pursuit piece where everyone is part of the pizza wheel and has their own specialty. We have sales, operations, finance, compliance and claims directors.

I could have bought the company and just employed other directors to do their jobs, but I decided I would give everyone a slice of the action because that’s the way you motivate people. We set up a holding company. I asked everyone to put in up to £1000 taking shares.

My shareholding now is 52.5%. I have the controlling interest and the final say on everything. It’s always been our intention to have a managing director and a board of directors who are looking after it for the next generation.

What has pushed the growth from £6m through £15m to £23m today?

Word of mouth. Most of us have come from some form of retail background so we’re firm customer service advocates. We actually have to do very little advertising because most of the advertising is done by our clients. We are professional advisors to the British Association of Removers and get a lot of business pushed through from them.

What guided you to add self-storage to the portfolio in 2007?

The industry has grown massively over the last 30 years. You can go to a small town in America and on the four corners of the town, there’s a storage facility, which is incredible, and you can see how self-storage would work better in the UK than the US. It’s a phenomena that just keeps growing and growing.

What is insurer support like?

We are Aviva Club 110 brokers and we find them to be extremely supportive of us. Allianz are great as well. We’ve had the same band of real supporters over the last 20 years. We work with Chaucer for customers goods. We place a bit into Lloyd’s and do some business with RSA.

Is it a market that needs advice?

Everyone needs advice, especially with terms and conditions transit. The transit aspect of the work they do is where the specialty comes into play. It’s difficult for them to go online and buy insurance because of the requirement for hire and reward. It’s far easier for them to ring a broker and let us do all the work.

What do you do on claims?

We have delegated claims authority. On customers’ goods claims we can make payments. We also deal with motor claims as a sort of post box service. We have 15 people handling claims.

Is the removal industry a bellwether for the state of the economy?

Absolutely. When Philip and I bought the business in 2007, we quickly knew that we were walking around the corner into what was a nasty situation. We find out by virtue of turnover, vehicle numbers, wage rolls pretty quickly when something’s going wrong. At the moment I have to say the industry is still buoyant.

Are you mainly UK based?

Lots of clients do international stuff. With the odd exception we only cater for UK companies.

Do you wholesale?

We do but not to any great extent. We prefer to do things directly.

What are your plans for the future?

It’s been organic double-digit growth for quite a few years and we had our greatest year during the first year of Covid. We are up quite substantially on that this year. So it’s more of the same really. We’re very lucky as a result of our specialty we have a 96% retention rate which is very good.

Are you planning on selling up?

In terms of staying independent versus joining a network, we’ll stay independent. A sale is always a possibility, but we’re very careful with our retention of staff. We generally don’t employ from within the insurance sector. We tend to grab graduates as they come out of university or people who’ve worked in service-related industries. We spend our time training them in the removals and self storage industry, and of course in the insurance industry.

My concern is how we would fit in with the much bigger consolidator and whether the staff would start losing the benefits that they’ve always enjoyed. That’s a big thing for me. We’ve always looked after our staff very well. We’re not saying never, the phone has rung and we’ve had a few conversations with different people but no immediate plans.

What size do you think you can get to then?

I know lots of firms have business plans and aspirations to grow their businesses to certain levels but we genuinely don’t. Our central most important ethos is to look after our customers. If that means we slide back to £18m so be it, if it means we get to £30m then that’s great. What’s important to me is that our customers get looked after. Our way of doing that is by looking after our staff to make sure they look after our clients.

We’ve always has been service driven ever since 1970 and that’s what makes us the company that we are.