Business insurer QBE has this week officially launched its new office in Leeds, reinforcing its UK regional broker strategy and its commitment to the Yorkshire market. Situated at West Village, Wellington Street, often referred to as Leeds’ insurance centre, the move reflects a £3.6m investment in the West Yorkshire city.
QBE’s new Leeds office is the largest European site for the global insurer outside of London with more than 450 employees based there, representing a 40% growth in the Yorkshire hub’s headcount since 2022.
Most people based in the Leeds office support QBE’s technology, claims and finance capabilities, following the recent opening of centres of excellence across these disciplines. The QBE Leeds office also has significant people and operations teams, which have both grown in the last few years.
While officially opening the office, QBE International CEO Jason Harris said the new Leeds address was setting a new benchmark for the business.
“We are excited to be moving our people to such a prestigious location that is in tune with our commitment to sustainability, modernisation ambitions and focus on employee wellbeing. The next chapter in our Leeds story includes expanding our underwriting capability, working with more local brokers to support even more businesses in the region.
“Leeds is one of the UK’s fastest growing cities with a diverse economy and an exceptional talent base. Over the last five years, we have set up centres of excellence here for robotics, claims and finance while building out our operations and people teams here. From Leeds we are leveraging local talent to support our business across Europe enabling us to consistently deliver great service, helping businesses get back on their feet more quickly.”
QBE has been developing its UK regional business for the past two years. Head of trading Leeds Janine Wood explains.
“Brokers were clear about what they wanted, to be able do business on their doorstep with decision makers who understand the local market and the challenges local businesses are contending with. Our response was to grow our regional network of underwriters authorised to write different sizes and ranges of cross class products across most industries.
Janine Wood adds, “What we’re offering Leeds is the technical expertise, wide appetite, flexible solutions and empowered local underwriting the second largest financial services centre in the UK deserves. Our team take responsibility, bring in our risk engineering and claims experts as needed and are not afraid to pick up the phone to give our brokers and customers a personalised and efficient service.”
Key facts about QBE’s new Leeds office:
- More than 20 underwriters able to write Property, Commercial Combined, Casualty, Contractors Combined, Fleet and Motor Trade.
- Wide-range of appetite managed locally – writing from £1,000 casualty excess of loss up to multi mullion pound cross class programmes.
- QBE has had a presence in Leeds for over 20 years following the acquisition of Iron Trades in 2000. Following a concerted regional push, QBE in Leeds has achieved consistent growth since 2008. Underwriters in Leeds have grown GWP to £100m, consistently out-delivering plans each year.
- More than 300 people handling claims and 80 people in finance as well as a robotics centre.
- QBE’s West Village home houses its innovation and automation activities including RPA (Robotic Process Automation), API’s (Application Programme Interfaces), Digital Readers and Intelligent Workflow solutions. This range of cutting-edge technology solutions performs 120,000 automated tasks and saves 8,000 hours per month. More than 30,000 customer claims tasks are automated each week.
Other key facts:
- Represents £3.6m investment.
- West Village features a premium wellness studio space for businesses at West Village and the general public.
- The workspace hub has been centred around a main courtyard with expansive, tiered biophilia including two private roof terraces in QBE’s workspace, communal breakout spaces and business lounge, flexible indoor and outdoor event spaces, multi-faith room, the largest cycle storage facility in the city, and local independent food and drink pop-ups who are surrounded by West Village’s anchor retailers, whose spaces are also being enhanced as part of the project.
- A new usable green space within Leeds’ city centre.
- Improvements are being made to the building to reduce CO2 emissions, improve air quality, reuse rainwater, reduce noise and create new habitats for local birds and wildlife, including rare butterfly species.
- The building is fitted with high efficiency air source heat pumps, sensor technology to promote the use of natural ventilation, new windows and additional wall insulation.
