From national firms to an Agent of the community – talking to Agent Margaret Hebbourn

After a decades-long career working for large insurance firms and commuting from her home in the Scottish city of Perth to the south of England - Margaret Hebbourn took control of her future and became an Agent of NFU Mutual. Margaret has now been growing her business for five years, so we took the chance to catch up with her and discuss what changes she’s made to the agency, and how it’s changed her.

It’s a pleasure to speak to you, Margaret. Can you start off by telling us a bit about your career leading up to NFU Mutual?
There are people who’ve become an Agent from all sorts of different backgrounds – farming, banking, financial services. But I’m one of those Agents who’s been working in insurance ever since I left school. I worked for a large firm based in the south of England for 13 years, which meant catching a red-eye flight most weeks just to get to work. I can’t say I enjoyed that much travelling, so I was fairly keen to find a new job closer to home.

My parents’ background is in agriculture, and they always insured through NFU Mutual, so I had a good idea who they were. But it wasn’t until I saw the local Agent opportunity being advertised that I realised they had an office here in Perth. Since it was in the right industry, it tied in with my farming background, and it meant an end to the ridiculous travel – it seemed like the perfect opportunity. So, I applied, and became an Agent of NFU Mutual in September 2017.

What skills do you think you’ve carried over from your previous role?
Pretty much everything! Throughout my insurance career I fell into quite a few different roles. I had some underwriting experience, some account executive experience - I’d spent time within strategy, operations, marketing, and HR too. All of it has been helpful in driving business growth and development, handling contracts and legal questions, as well as the significant amount of relationship management I need to do as an Agent. Everything’s been put to good use.

If I’m being honest, I don’t think I fully understood the self-employed agency model when I first applied. But coming from a family-owned business, it’s given me the opportunity to do something I always wanted, but thought I’d never get the chance - running and growing my own business. I’ve enjoyed the nature of it, it’s challenging but very rewarding, and you feel in charge of your own destiny. The flip side to that is that you’re never off duty, and there’s nobody else to pass the buck off to! But I do get a lot of support from my business partners and we have various touchpoints within NFU Mutual if we need it.

How has the structure of the agency changed since you joined?
Currently we’ve got three Agents – Marc, Katy and me. And we’re up to 14 team members on the floor. They’re a mix of commercially licensed as well as motor and personal licensed, then we’ve got a quality and compliance manager and a senior customer service advisor who manages the rest of the team day to day. When I first joined, we were working out of an office hidden away on an industrial estate, but now we’re in a much more accessible location with plenty of room for our expanding business.

The three partners share responsibilities between us – Katy is our expert on claims and the operations side of things. Marc focuses on commercial sales, and I oversee everything from a strategic point of view. But we’re very hands-on as Agents – we’re in the office every day, we do a lot of the commercial sales ourselves and look after all of our large business customers personally. We each have our own customers that we deal with, and that customer base has been growing consistently over the last five years.

From my point of view, that’s been due to us seeking new opportunities - building a strong reputation and using it to expand the businesses we work with. We use our existing customers for recommendations and try to do a lot of local marketing. We then grow the team in line with this growing portfolio. That way we can ensure we have the right resources in place to look after what can often be big customers. By the end of this year the agency is on track to be roughly three times the size it was when I joined in 2017.

Thank you for taking the time to chat to us, Margaret. Before we go, could you try to sum up what makes being an Agent of NFU Mutual so enjoyable?
Well NFU Mutual provide support while also offering you the freedom to run things the way you want to. For example, we’re very much of the opinion that we’re competing against brokers. So in many ways we advertise ourselves like a regional broker would – with a lot of local marketing and going to shows, or hospitality events for our clients. We have some vehicles and a show trailer for visible branding in the area too. NFU Mutual have been on board with my plan and understand how important all the marketing activity is for us to compete for business, and they’ve been supportive with that.

Also for me, I love working locally - and it’s not just because I don’t have to fly down to London anymore! I feel much more a part of my local community now. I get to work with so many interesting and wide-ranging companies – I think we’ve got some amazing businesses here in Perthshire and I love learning about what they do and how they operate. I find it very rewarding getting to meet with the owners, find out about their issues, then come up with solutions together. That part is very rewarding, and it feels like we’re actually helping to improve peoples’ lives.

Join us on our journey
Just like Margaret, you too can become part of your local community, take control of your future, and grow your own agency with NFU Mutual. So take a look at our latest opportunities or sign up for job alerts by email.