The Business Insurance Bureau

About us The business Insurance Bureau

About The Business Insurance Bureau

Who are The Business Insurance Bureau?

The Business Insurance Bureau is a niche specialist underwriter and commercial insurance broker, defying conventional categorisation, comprising of a small number of gifted individuals forming a collective intellectual giant.

We work from an elegant Edwardian restored townhouse in Glasgow called ‘Wits End’. We find that the name of our office reflects the mental torture we alleviate for our clients, who can often be at the end of their rope with the circumstances they find themselves in.

We insure a spectacularly diverse clientele, similarly exclusive and excellent in their field, who rely on The Business Insurance Bureau to protect their assets, minimise their liabilities and secure their future.

Relationship insuring: It's what we do

We have developed our own unique range of quality insurance products, which has given the business a competitive advantage in several areas. Being in control of the entire process, from enquiry to policy issue, has allowed our business to deliver service levels hitherto unimaginable in this sector, or indeed for a business of its physical size.
 
Putting the needs and wishes of the client at the centre of our work has developed a culture where the detail given to customer care is so prolific that it is our reputation which brings new businesses to join our clientele. We also have an imaginative and quality professional ‘in-house’ marketing and public relations division to promote our message to the business community.

How we do things...

Above all, the business develops its competitive advantages through the dedication of its team to career development, continuous learning, deepening knowledge and specific industry expertise.

The business sees itself in partnership with its clientele – bringing together a deep knowledge of the client’s business with our own market research and industry expertise.

We have a continuous commitment to product development, and an ongoing commitment to improving efficiency across the business, so that our team can dedicate their energy to providing first class client solutions. More than any other provider, we believe in ‘relationship insuring’. We will never have a touch-tone telephone system.

 

"It's not what you do that matters, it's how you treat people - day in, day out - that is the ultimate measure of all things." - Bob Hannah

Meet the Team

Bob Hannah ACII

Supreme Commander

Bob is owner and founder of The Business Insurance Bureau. He started his insurance career in Eagle Star and soon decided to start his own brokerage at the fresh age of 27, with a young family in tow.

To the team he is their Coach, preparing them for the slings and arrows of the ever-changing insurance market.

To the clientele he is a source of peace of mind. Bob leads the business and the team with humour, empathy and over four decades of experiential wisdom.

Paula Gillies

Queen of the 'Sump'

Paula is fondly known as Queen of the Sump and has worked for the business for over 25 years.

She has worked in almost all areas of the business, working her way from Underwriting and Broking (holding the UW pen for a number of years) to HR and Accounts.

Paula now manages the operations of the business and ensures the engine runs smoothly. She is a resilient and compassionate manager with a relaxed and enthusiastic approach to solving all problems that come our way, from The Sump and beyond.

Meet Bob the Broker's Creator

The Bob the Broker cartoon is the brand personification of The Business Insurance Bureau and was originally created and drawn by Bob’s partner of two decades, Julia Gordon-Smith. 

As our brand ambassador, Bob usually has important things to say, and being an old hippy at heart, he usually says them with a placard, as though he was the best dressed protester on a CND march.

From an insurance perspective, he’s got a lot to protest about, mostly trying to shake off the overwhelming complacency most people feel about Bob’s purpose in life: getting their insurances spot on and complying with the policy conditions.

Bob’s presence is intended to be happy, humorous and colourful – so if he catches your eye and you act upon his advice, he’ll have succeeded in his mission.

 

Bob the Broker

Our spiritual guru in a suit with a Duchamp tie, Bob and his hippie camper van exist to remind us that we are all on the journey to making it cheaper by doing it right. 

Artist & Creator

Julia Gordon-Smith

Creative Development

Our Modus Operandi

There’s a scene in the movie, “Play It Again, Sam” where the main character goes on an arranged ‘blind’ date.. Asked the next day how the date went, he replies I’ve spent better nights with an insurance salesman”.

The perception that insurance is ‘boring but important’ does not reflect the reality. In modern parlance, it’s really quite ‘sexy’.

Underwriting and broking the colossal risks facing the business community is enormously challenging, intellectually stimulating and riveting for the curious. As lives and livelihoods are on the line, it is never dull, but it is absolutely vital in its importance.

Many businesses like to think of themselves as being in a passionate endeavour, a higher purpose -and we’re no different. Securing the future from the jaws of random chance and human failings is among the most satisfying work you can complete and this is what we do. The range of and diversity of risks insured within our clientele is amazing.

 

“All you need is love” has been our philosophical standpoint and backdrop since Bob began the business in 1983 – it’s about finding your purpose and fulfilling it.

John Lennon’s lyric, ‘ There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done’ speaks not just for an internal attitude of disciplined, committed, self-reliance and self- belief, but also for the external spirit of the Victorian pioneers of modern underwriting, where industrial ‘progress’ was made possible through the ability transfer the risks involved to the insurance industry. The scope of insurability is breath-taking, nothing that ‘can’t be done’ – and we can do it for you.

Our passion comes from a fascination about businesses, the people who make things happen, the inventiveness that makes things work.

Like a benign investigative journalism, our mission is three fold: first to research and understand and secondly, to explain and thirdly, to turn that understanding into a secure, insured future.

This website is part of that ‘mission to explain’, in simple language, many things of great importance which are often obscured by day to day living, yet cannot be ignored without prejudicing the protection you rely upon for the worst of days.
However noble the intention, insurance companies are not philanthropists, these are highly conditional contracts – often conditional upon your own behaviour, about how you run your business.

Strategically, we want to get ‘beyond insurance’, getting our hands dirty by helping you to minimise risk. This is because, in his forty plus years in this industry, Bob has never seen a serious claim where the insured outcome was better than that the disaster hadn’t happened at all.

The business sees itself in partnership with its clientele – bringing together a deep knowledge of the client’s business with our own market research and industry expertise.

We have a continuous commitment to product development, and an ongoing commitment to improving efficiency across the business, so that our team can dedicate their energy to providing first class client solutions. More than any other provider, we believe in ‘relationship insuring’. We will never have a touch-tone telephone system.