GROWING online competition and regulatory concerns have contributed to profits at Kwik-Fit Insurance Services more than halving.
The Uddingston company, owned by Belgian insurer Ageas, saw its revenue slide by 21 per cent from £47.16 million to £37.22 million, with policy numbers dipping by around 95,000 to 891,502.
Pre-tax profits came in at £1 million for 2013, down from £2.27 million in 2012, according to accounts filed at Companies House.
Writing in the accounts, the directors said: "The amount of turnover drives the overall size and profitability of the company. Revenue has fallen over the last two years as a result of increased competition in the market, particularly for new business customers through online trading.
"Regulatory changes in the year, particularly the handling of customer claim data, also adversely impacted revenue."
Average staff numbers dipped from 841 to 764, with reductions in the numbers of both sales and support employees.
Directors' emoluments and pension contributions increased from £335,750 to £501,240, with the highest paid seeing their remuneration package rise to £249,675, from the £177,612 recorded in the previous year.
Jason Banwell, managing director, said the Kwik-Fit business has seen its core policy numbers increase every month in 2014.
It is planning to hire 50 new staff in Lanarkshire across its sales and customer service areas in the coming months.
Ageas UK's first-quarter loss in 2014 was £4.6 million as a result of weather-related costs, compared to a profit of £19.4m in 2013.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article