Alliance articles

Alliance and Towergate deal.

Alliance Insurance Management, one of the top corporate risk brokers in the country, has joined forces with the Towergate Group.

Set up just six years ago, the Bury St Edmunds-based Alliance has built up a formidable national reputation in business risk, including a specialist insurance arm which deals with many of Britain's best restaurants.

The company, which has 30 staff in its offices in Bury and London, will continue to be led by CEO John McLaren-Stewart, one of the three directors who set up the business in 2000, and will expand its presence within the East Anglian region.

Alliance currently controls premiums of £10m and has a number of specialist corporate niches which include crisis management and asbestos surveying – all included in the acquisition.

Mr McLaren-Stewart said the deal meant there was now a huge opportunity to grow those specialist areas.

"We are very familiar with Towergate"s track record and the opportunities for our team to fulfil their full potential.  Our combined levels of expertise and client services will be very tough to beat.

"We have worked hard to grow Alliance as a business which identifies with its clients to provide the best in corporate risk management and we will continue to do that with our current clients and with future ones. The service we offer will not change."

Towergate Executive Chairman, Peter Cullum, was delighted to complete the transaction: "This is one of those deals that was irresistible. It was an exciting proposition to be able to further cement our leading position in the region and create a regional broking capability that is as strong as you will find."

Alliance Insurance Management was set up six years ago when John McLaren-Stewart, Jonathan Quaile and Steve Careford acquired Bernard Knope and Partners in Bury St Edmunds and then Robert Gardner Insurance three years later.

They established Alliance Corporate Risk Management and became one of the top five per cent of corporate risk brokers in the country, twice being short listed as Young Company of the Year in the CBI's Growing Business Awards, the 'business Oscars'.

Alliance Restaurant Insurance provides specialist cover to the best restaurants in the country, and numbers more than half of the UK's top ten restaurants as clients.

Towergate is Europe's largest independently owned insurance intermediary, offering 200 specialist insurance products and employing more than 3,500 people in 100 offices. The Group controls in excess of £1.5bn of Gross Written Premium on an annualised basis.