THE landmark Hiscox building has been open in York for almost a year, and is home to a wide range of activities linked to the thriving insurance business - as well as being a talking point in its own right.
About 250 people work within the four-storey complex, whose distinctive features include a massive central staircase and an equally imposing rocket, a product of past peaceful co-operation between the US and Russia rather than rivalry.
That symbol of collaboration is appropriate for a building designed to encourage interaction between colleagues who may work in very different parts of the company but whose input and knowledge may also be very useful to each other.
Nor is this spirit of co-operation reserved for those who work for the insurance giant, for the building also houses the Hiscox Business Club, which provides office space for small enterprises in the city.
Hiscox has also been the headline sponsor for the past three years of The Press Business Awards, which are being presented next Thursday, November 17, and facilities at its HQ are also available for appropriate use by local organisations.
“We wanted this to be something that benefited York and the people of York,” said Alan Millard, chief operating officer for Hiscox UK and Ireland. “Our aim was always to have a building that people would be proud of and that they wanted to come to work in.
“This building will have 500 people in it when it’s full and I reckon it will only take one or two minutes to find anybody.
“For us to continue to create and innovate you need collaboration between different skills, you get a diversity in the office, which is healthy.”
The Press spoke to some of the people who work in the building, whose roles range from sorting out claims to analysing future insurance trends.  
Sally Lodge, claims manager, deals with professional indemnity and liability claims, and said these could range from complaints against a wedding photographer to the consequences of a construction site accident.
Most of the Hiscox team were qualified solicitors who had worked in private practice. “What that enables us to do is provide a much more detailed level of service,” she said, adding it helped them assess the likely progress of a case and how best to resolve it, and also helped them to get the best for their clients from the external solicitors they worked with.
She was in the Hiscox Leeds office before moving to York, and went from a small office where one felt more isolated from the company as a whole to her present base, where people from many different departments also worked.
“You are able to become far more integrated into the business and far more joined up. If you are in the same building, people come up to your desk or you bump into them at the coffee machine.You get a much better sense of what’s going on,” she said.
Vicky Foster, database services technology leader, works in IT providing support across the whole company, with her team based not only in York but also in London, Colchester, Manchester and Atlanta, Georgia.
Her particular responsibility was for databases, including information provided by Hiscox customers. She had also recently put in place a training programme for all the company’s employees to help them recognise and avoid online hazards.
The company was very proactive on the IT side and was “ahead of the curve” in working with cloud technology.
She said: “It’s the best place I have ever worked in, it’s got a nice ambience. All the equipment is very good, the desk set-up is just perfect, which makes life a lot easier.
“Everyone is given what they need to do the best job they can, which is very important.”
Rebecca Ingram, underwriting centre north team leader, heads a team of 14 underwriters looking after commercial clients and private customers with high-worth property in the north of England, Scotland and Ireland. Their relationship with brokers was crucial to ensuring they understood clients’s needs and provided products to meet them.
She said: “I think we are incredibly lucky, this isn’t a normal office by any stretch of the imagination. I feel so fortunate to work somewhere so beautiful and where colleague collaboration is just part of what we do. We have people walking past who want to come in and look round the ‘art gallery’, they don’t realise it’s an office.” She said the Hiscox Business Club was particularly special, adding: “I think it’s important for bigger businesses to give back to smaller businesses and the community.”
Paul Summers, head of operations and business change, is responsible for the sales and customer service teams in Hiscox Direct - the people most members of the public interact with when they contact the company - and for “driving continual improvement and transformation”.
He said there were 120 people in the teams, who spoke to about 1,000 people a day, with a customer base of 150,000, split between domestic and small business insurance customers. This meant dealing with a great variety of situations and the teams were very versatile and highly trained, with a major focus on customer service.
“When you ring Hiscox you feel you are being genuinely listened to,” he said. “The customer is truly at the centre of everything we do here at Hiscox.
 “This is by far the most enjoyable work environment I have ever worked in. It has a nice balance of professionalism, energy and friendliness and a perfect location; it’s a wonderful building to work in.”
James Scottwood is an HR manager looking after 200 to 220 people, some outside York. He and his colleagues had a strategic role, focusing very much on recruitment and engagement. “Our philosophy has always been to create an awesome environment where people want to be and where people will do their best for us.” He said it was a fast-growing business where the pace of change was equally fast. “People need to be on board with that and that requires great communications and great involvement.”
As the business grew they had to translate that ethos into recruitment, when they looked for people with integrity who wanted to “fight for the best for our customers” and would not just accept the average.
“That I can find in York. York is an amazing city, with smart, savvy and educated people who challenge convention every day, and my job is to find them,” he said.
His expectations for the new building had been “incredibly high”, but the reality had more than matched them.
“I love the fact that I know everybody who works here, on every floor,” he said.
Ken Phillips is an underwriter on the commercial side who deals specifically with insurance brokers, saying there was a three-way relationship between them and the customer. “We need to understand the business to insure it. They want to understand what the product is.
“They will give us feedback on where they see the risk to be to their business. The broker will discuss that with us and we can take that to evolve the product. Every policy can be as tailored as the client or broker wants it to be.”
He appreciated the benefits of having so many different teams together under one roof. “It’s all different areas of experience and knowledge you can bounce ideas off and be more collaborative, and I think the way the office is set up, because it’s so open and free, it’s perhaps a bit easier to do that.”
Scott Murphy works in business futures, part of a small team looking at all different aspects of how innovation and change can be put to best use for Hiscox and its customers.
“We are trying to build the consumer insurance experience of the future. That can be how customers connect with us, what kind of products they buy - it’s all about improving the experience for the customer.”
A former University of York student, until earlier this year he was working in the “fintech” (financial technology) sector in the City of London. “I think there’s something exciting about having innovation done outside of London,” he said.
“We are not only looking at the here and now; our remit is five years plus. It’s not just tinkering round the edges, these are huge changes which will affect what you buy, how to buy it if you choose to buy it - it’s a continually developing view of the future.”
He saw the Hiscox rocket as a metaphor for the business and the building, going onwards and upwards. “This is something different for York, and if it marks a sea change as a model for co-operation with the community and how everyone operates, it becomes the new ideal,” he said.