Ascot founder Nathan Ray shares how company thrived despite COVID-19 pandemic

Insurance Business Australia (IB) recently revealed the winners of its Fast Brokerages awards for 2022 – brokerages that racked up over 30% combined GWP, revenue, and broker headcount growth in 2020 and 2021 despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Nathan Ray, the founder of Ascot Insurance Group (Ascot), one of this year’s fast brokerages in Australia, shared how the company had thrived – rather than merely survived – in a challenging market over the last two years.

Ray founded Ascot in 2018 to focus on the specialty of skilled insurance placement solutions for businesses in the hazardous and high-risk industries, including the manufacturing, warehousing, chemical, recycling, and supply chain industries. However, only two years since the brokerage was established, the COVID-19 pandemic began – significantly increasing the number of clients in hazardous and high-risk industries at a time of diminished capacity.

In an interview with IB, Ray said: “Not being able to attend sites and perform risk engineering surveys to best present the clients to the increasingly difficult insurance market was an enormous headache.”

However, Ascot was able to remain resilient and grow rapidly by providing excellent outcomes for new and existing clients by “partnering with the client” to present their business and their desired insurance cover to the insurers locally and globally.

“An example was with a particular plastics manufacturing client [that we requested to join] our insurer presentations and explain their investment in the business and future improvements of their factories. The outcome was a premium saving of more than $400,000 and plans for further savings along with a long-term relationship with the insurer,” Ray told IB.

Find out more about Ascot and why it stood out among brokerages in Australia this year by checking out its profile here. You can also see the rest of this year’s winners by reading the IB Fast Brokerages 2022 report for free.