SJL Insurance Services (SJL) were formed in Worcester in August 2001 by Simon Lancaster who continues to own and run the business. We have grown rapidly in these ten years and continue to grow significantly through an extremely pro-active approach to business and the hard work of Simon and his dedicated staff.

We have moved to new office premises and now employ eighteen staff.

We have a growing panel of selected insurers with whom we place high volumes of profitable business and we run a number of ‘schemes’ for these insurers. We are also constantly looking to add new carriers, products and schemes to our panel.

We specialise in property owner and commercial insurance and write high levels of new business in these areas whilst enjoying an excellent renewal retention.

We started as a wholesale scheme broker and about 70% of our business is transacted via a growing network of over 450 independent insurance brokers nationwide. All of these brokers are independently authorised and regulated by the FSA and are personally visited by us before we grant them an agency. They are typically small to medium sized commercial brokers who use us to place some of their business utilising our excellent property and commercial insurance schemes.

In the last couple of years we have also moved heavily into distributing our products directly to commercial clients in our chosen classes of business, which now accounts for the other 30% of our business. We have five full time members of staff developing our ‘direct’ business and have also purchased a couple of small commercial/property brokers whilst we are pro-actively looking to acquire further businesses should the right opportunity arise. We are also on the preferred panel of the 'Find a Broker' helpline from the British Insurance Brokers Association and work closely with them on that project.

We have grown by 30% per year on average. In the current financial year our premium income is £5.5million and the target for next year is over £6.5million with additional growth in all future years. About 60% of this is property business and 40% is general commercial insurance.

We have invested heavily in IT, including a new back office software/quotation system and have recently developed this excellent interactive website.

We will continue to invest heavily in compliance to ensure that we are meeting the required guidelines. In addition to our vast range of internal compliance activities we are also ‘Gold’ members of RWA compliance group and enjoy the monthly focus of an external compliance officer who carries out regular audits for us. We are also members of BIBA.