North East insurance group expects to create jobs with expansion

Rapidly expanding insurance and vehicle recovery business NCI says it is looking to create 50 new jobs by 2015 after increasing its call handling capacity with help from another North East firm.

NCI has posted a 400% sales increase in the last three years and expects to grow its turnover from £16m to £20m in the current financial year ending April 2014.

By 2015 it expects to grow its workforce from 90 to 140 and, in the longer term, grow it up to 250 as it pursues its goal of becoming a £50m-a-year enterprise.

Ahead of its anticipated growth, the company has invested in a new telecoms system which has significantly increased its call-handling capacity to meet growing demand for its services.

The firm enlisted its long-time IT partner Ogilvie Communications – which has offices in Gateshead - to install the new Samsung system.

It means the group’s base on Victoria Avenue now has the technology infrastructure to facilitate 250 members of staff.

Software supplied by the Gateshead based firm also enabled the firm to install a network of screens displaying key information to help staff manage their workload and performance.

Craig Astbury, group IT director at NCI, said the new technology would aid the company’s growth – particularly by enabling it to increase the services it supplies to other insurance firms.

He said: “The new telecoms system will help us deal with the growth we’ve experienced in the last couple of years - having doubled our workforce in that time - but it will also set us up for the next few years as well.

“Previously we would only have been able to handle calls from our own customers but we can now sell our services by white labelling our claims-handling services through other insurance companies.

“Our telephone system changes have allowed us to do that.“

NCI predominantly works in the breakdown cover, car insurance and pet insurance markets and is experiencing strong growth across the board.

Astbury said: “Most significantly we’ve seen growth in our car insurance and pet insurance products. Driving the growth in car insurance is the gender directive that came in at the end of last year preventing insurers from discounting female drivers.

“We are taking advantage of that change because it has levelled the playing field in terms of the rate between male and female drivers. At the same time, pet insurance is growing as the cost of veterinary treatment continues to rise and we have certainly noticed claims are on the up currently.”

Ogilvie Communications has worked with NCI for the last two years, providing the technology the insurance company has needed on its rapid growth trajectory.

Ogilvie helped to plan – and subsequently supplied and installed – a new server infrastructure platform at NCI, enabling the running of several virtual servers and allowing the firm to support more users in line with its growth plans.

As part of the upgrade, users have also been migrated to a remote desktop set-up, centralising management of applications and reducing power consumption.