Swinton is the UK’s largest high street insurance broker with over 580 branches across the country. A major player in the personal motor and household insurance sectors, Swinton is expanding into commercial insurance and specialist areas such as motor bikes, motorhomes and caravans.

121 has worked with Swinton since 2006 and during this time has been involved in a wide range of projects across all aspects of the business. The common feature of these projects is that they have all been part of Swinton’s drive for sales growth. The three examples outlined below illustrate a typical range of 121 projects.

An important part of Swinton’s growth strategy is the acquisition of small and medium sized brokers. They have a very experienced acquisitions unit that appraises broker businesses, negotiates and, if there is a

positive outcome, starts to integrate the broker into Swinton. The acquisitions unit needs a steady flow of meetings with suitable brokers.

When 121 started working with the acquisitions team at the end of 2006, Swinton were suffering from poor relations with brokers, attempts to set up initial meetings were often badly received by the brokers approached and many of the meetings were not productive.

121 started by conducting a major clean up and enhancement of the database of UK brokers through a combination of finding new data sources, telephone and Internet research. We then designed a rolling contact programme using mailings backed by an acquisitions website, followed up by

telephone contact using a small, dedicated team. 121 built a sophisticated web based database and pipeline management system so that leads can be tracked through all the stages of acquisition through to completion.

121 has delivered the targeted number of leads each year, the perception of Swinton by brokers has risen and as we have enhanced the profiles of broker businesses we have been able to target acquisition campaigns to specific types of broker.