An outstanding culture of personal customer care in a market increasingly driven by chat bots, aggregators and algorithms has won Bennett Christmas Insurance Brokers (BCIB) the prestigious Independent Insurance Broker of the Year Award.
The 40-strong team, based at Bennett Christmas’ group headquarters in Burgess Hill, West Sussex, scooped the honour at the recent Broker Network conference.
It followed a major focus by the firm over the past year on redefining customer care in the insurance sector, based on a core ethos that it’s people who make the difference.
Bennett Christmas Group Managing Director Tom Stripp, said: “‘Redefining care’ and ‘Our People Make the Difference’ were the two phrases that drove the relaunch of the firm’s website in 2018. And they really sum up what we are about and what sets us apart from our competitors.
“Increasingly, those competitors are online, pushing products through digital channels where the focus is on price and the customer is left to navigate much of the complexity of insurance themselves.
“We know policies should never be selected on price alone and that adequacy of cover is far more important. That’s why we felt the need to ‘Redefine Care’, so people can distinguish between the care they get with us versus what they get elsewhere. We recruit people with a caring attitude and have a company culture that’s centred on ‘care’. We elevate care to a new level.
“It’s about professional service and professional, trusted support.”
Bennett Christmas is one of 600 regional insurance brokers who are members of Broker Network.
Its Chief Network Officer Richard Pitt, said the judges were impressed by the firm’s ‘thriving culture, built on family values’. They were confident it was making great strides towards a bright future, thanks to its Futures Group, which is driven by younger members of the team.
“You’ll notice a strapline of ‘Our People Make the Difference’ running throughout a lot of Bennett Christmas’ brand, and it’s fair to say that the team really lives and breathes this ethos, from helping customers complete forms to supporting their colleagues, even if that’s just by making the tea,” said Richard. “In their submission, the team said: ‘It’s our relationships and our motivation to care for others that sets us apart.’ This really sums up why Bennett Christmas was selected as the winner of this much sought-after award.”