North star

Area Manager Cath Timberlake reveals how modern northern England, Scotland and Ireland are in contrast to their outdated stereotypes, says John Watson

A Barnsley bus stop was crucial in launching Cath Timberlake on a successful career in insurance.

As a 16-year-old school leaver, she was pondering how to start her working life. “I had an interview at Eagle Star in my home town of Barnsley,” Cath explains. “It was a nice modern office and the man interviewing me seemed decent. But best of all it was handy for the bus stop, so I took the job.”

More than 30 years on, Cath no longer travels to work by bus, but she has stuck with insurance. Today, she is Hiscox’s Area Manager for northern England, Scotland and Ireland. Her territory stretches from Cheshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire northwards, which includes some of Britain’s most vibrant cities. Economic growth, emerging wealth and regeneration have made Cath’s area one of the most dynamic and exciting markets for Hiscox today.

Cath feels that her early experiences during more than two decades with Eagle Star gave her an insurance education that today’s recruits would find hard to duplicate. As well as studying for the formal qualifications that made her a Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute, she was involved in a branch operation that covered all aspects of the business.

“It was a great grounding,” she says. “The customer that you sold a policy to came back to you when they had a claim. The administration and accounting were all handled in the same office. You didn’t need anything as formal as Treating Customers Fairly to understand the importance of looking after your clients. You learned by mistakes and what didn’t kill you made you stronger.”

After stints with Independent and Royal & SunAlliance, Cath joined Hiscox’s Leeds office in 2004, tasked with building the brand in the northeast. “Some brokers still see Hiscox as London-centric and part of our challenge is to convince them that we’re not,” she says. “You need to have a local presence in markets to fully understand them and to be taken seriously.”

For example, she convinced Hiscox that an office in Manchester was absolutely essential to give proper support to brokers in the northwest. It opened last January. Cath says: “It may only look a little distance on a map, but the distance between Leeds and Manchester is so big in so many ways.” This view underlines her ultimate philosophy of business.

The friendly face of insurance

“You cannot underestimate the importance of a good relationship with your customers, either as an insurer or as a broker. You must not be complacent,” says Cath. “Hiscox is a market leader in some sectors, such as high net worth home insurance. In others, we are the upstart, pecking away at the established competition. But if I am complacent about my strong relationships and the areas where I am a leader, then someone else will start pecking away at me.” She works hard on relationships, clocking up plenty of free coffees on her café loyalty card as she meets with colleagues and brokers across her area.

The caffeine may also help fuel her energetic lifestyle. Cath is a self-confessed ‘gym bunny’, enjoying 6.30am workouts at the gym across the road from her office. She has, as a nod to passing 50, given up kickboxing and now works out any stresses of the week by yomping across the Yorkshire Dales.

Cath’s heart remains in Yorkshire, but she is thoroughly enjoying the travel that comes with her latest role. “I think there is something in the Yorkshire culture that travels well and I have been made so welcome by brokers across the north, Scotland and Ireland,” says Cath.

“At the end of the day, most of the issues they face are the same. They are running businesses and have the usual worries of finding good people, retaining customers and succession planning.”

But, after six months in the job, Cath has identified some variations between different broker markets. “The consolidation trend is not as advanced in Scotland as it is in the northeast and in Ireland, where the pace of consolidation is increasing rapidly,” she says.

“Part of my job is to reassure brokers about the impact of consolidation. People see the threat of the trend, but not always the opportunities.

“People trade with people and as firms consolidate and get bigger there is a danger of getting bogged down in a corporate culture and creating an opportunity for other, more nimble, firms to move ahead.”

Cath occasionally wonders how life might have been different had she moved into broking. “It is a regret. It’s something I definitely could and should have done and would have enjoyed,” she says. “I never had the guts to go out and do it and I am full of admiration for those brokers who did.”

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Who says it’s grim up north?

“It is not only the footballers’ wives in Cheshire who’ve got the money to spend these days,” says Cath Timberlake. “We have got a dynamic entrepreneurial economy all across the region and pockets of growing wealth.”

Cities in the region are wearing their regeneration badges with pride: Liverpool is European City of Culture 2008, Manchester is xpecting to build a media hub around the relocation of thousands of BBC jobs to the city, Newcastle boasts its new Baltic arts centre and Glasgow has just been confirmed as the host city for the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

“Wealth is also increasing dramatically in Ireland, with 40 per cent of exports now linked to service industries,” says Cath.

The past few years have seen the emergence of more entrepreneurs in the region and Cath feels there are opportunities for brokers to help these newly wealthy clients to fully understand their insurance needs.

“There are also challenges for brokers who may have built their business around serving a manufacturing base that is disappearing,” she says. “We can help them evolve their business to fit with a service economy.”

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