Markel UK today announced its commitment to grow through the promotion of two of its most successful Branch Managers to UK Sales Managers.

Steve Valentine, branch manager of Markel UK's Reigate office and Andy Partington, branch manager of the Birmingham office will now have 'division-wide' responsibility for sales whilst continuing to have responsibility for their respective branches in Reigate and Birmingham.

Steve Carroll, Managing Director of Markel UK, stated: 'Markel UK has a proud history of producing successful results on a consistent basis, using a model that has served us well over the years. We are now faced with a changing retail landscape that presents us with different challenges which we have to address: the commoditisation of some of our products, new products, broker consolidation and e-trading. 

We have to respond to these challenges and consequently have 'fine tuned' our model, so that we can achieve our ultimate goal of growing the business profitably. The implementation of a more 'uniform' approach will help us achieve more consistent levels of sales growth across the whole branch network.

Both Steve and Andy have consistently achieved budget, delivered strong sales results, successfully established new products and championed 'online' usage by their brokers. I feel that by giving them 'division-wide' responsibility for sales, the whole Company will benefit from their expertise.'

Steve Valentine will now have responsibility for developing further London business in addition to his existing South East responsibilities and Andy Partington will have responsibility for developing business throughout the rest of the UK in addition to his Midlands work.