Aventum Group traces its beginnings to a small UK retail dealer known as Direct Insurance Company, which Bearman launched when he was 18 years outdated in 1996. He had needed to develop into an architect, however “fell into the insurance enterprise” and, after school, ended up managing the brokerage. He remembers that interval as a “pre-Google, pre-laptop time,” throughout which he used the Yellow Pages to contact shoppers about renewal dates.
Though the corporate has since assumed a brand new identify and come a good distance from its “humble beginnings,” Bearman and his crew imagine their work has simply begun.
“We didn’t have any preconceived concepts,” he mentioned in regards to the begin of his firm. “We simply knew we wanted to work laborious at it. We’re a service-driven enterprise and that was clearly the core of the enterprise and all the time has been.”
Over time, among the many highlights of Aventum’s improvement are its worldwide expansion and rebranding in 2021. The latter was meant to deliver a number of companies – corresponding to specialty broking and underwriting businesses – “underneath one entity, one group, one id”. This technique has labored “each from a consumer and a market perspective,” he mentioned, as a result of it permits extra to know the precise capabilities of the group’s Novus, Consilium and Rokstone companies.
Along with the problem of gaining and sustaining shoppers, operating the enterprise remotely is one other troublesome accountability Bearman and his crew have centered on.
“I’ve all the time been a believer of main from the entrance, being within the workplace and together with your folks,” he mentioned. “It’s way more troublesome whenever you’ve obtained 15 places worldwide. However we attempt, the place doable, to have each day and weekly contact with each workplace, all of the stakeholders.”
Bearman mentioned this work association is useful in selling agility and workers’ openness to totally different modes of communication, corresponding to Zoom calls.
“However you’ve nonetheless obtained your challenges [in terms of] totally different regulatory environments, clearly totally different nuances to native markets,” he added. “Our technique from an underwriting perspective is all the time to go the place the work is. We establish the most effective groups of underwriters and we successfully construct an workplace round them.”
Regardless of operational and pandemic-related points, Bearman sees thrilling occasions forward as Aventum continues to discover new markets and territories.
For many who need to begin their very own insurance enterprise, he has a easy piece of recommendation: “Be resilient. You recognize, it doesn’t work the primary time. It may not work the second time, however don’t surrender.”
Watch the complete interview right here
