Admiral

For about seven years in the early 1990s I was a Name at Lloyd’s. It conferred privileges and obligations. Among the former, being able to use the Members’ Writing Room to sleep in at lunchtime. A tedious obligation was to write a cheque annually in my first few years to pay my losses.

I took a closer interest than many Names in my syndicates. One area that never, ever made money was Motor. However, I did insure my own car with the syndicate where I was an underwriter and was given a discount. The underwriter was Mark Brockbank and I slightly knew him and his family in Cumberland. To cut a long story short his business morphed into Admiral; Mark sold up in 1998; it was floated in 2004 and is now in the FTSE 100, employing more than 8,000 people, with four million customers and turnover of more than £2.2 billion.

I am still a customer and, as it happens, have never, ever made a claim. At renewal time at the end of last year I noticed that my premium had been creeping up over the years. I gave them a tinkle to chat this over and got treated with great courtesy but a marked reluctance to lower my rate. Every time the Admiral expert interrogated her computer it was adamant that I should pay the offered rate or more no matter how much I explained about my low mileage, low value car, requirement for only Third Party cover, etc.

Finally, I said that I had been a non-claiming client since before her computer was born and could she please have a chat with it until it cut my rate or we would not be talking again. Rather to my surprise she came back with a cut of almost 50% which I accepted with gratitude.

I expected nothing else from Admiral and so was taken by surprise when a long cardboard box of fresh flowers was delivered this week. Guess who “bunched” me? Here’s the card.

And here are the flowers. Thank you Emma and all your colleagues in Cardiff. Admiral is, incidentally, the only FTSE 100 company with its HQ in Wales.

https://youtu.be/puuWsTitPa4