LifeSearch announces 'record' profit increase and growth plans

clock • 2 min read

LifeSearch revealed an 8% increase in profits in its financial results for the year ending August 2015 at its annual awards.

The protection adviser firm revealed an 8% increase in pre-tax profit to £1,102,468. 

It also saw a 13% increase in turnover to £22,268,839, 13% increase in gross profit to £5,693,346 and a 17% increase in EBITDA to £1,515,140.

LifeSearch had changed its business model to a partnership in March 2015 with profits shared among staff.

Speaking at the awards, Tom Baigrie, founder and chief executive of LifeSearch said: "Two years ago I told you that we were exploring the idea of becoming a partnership and then last year I told you we had shared our profit at 25% of our profit between 127 of us who had been here three years.

"Had we not done that, our profit growth this year would have been almost 40%."

In its second round of profit distribution last week, LifeSearch shared out a 10% increase in profits among 6% more employees, compared to the previous year. 

ComparetheMarket deal 

Last week LifeSearch extended its partnership with comparison site CompareTheMarket. 

Baigrie said of the deal: "Last week had us protecting 1284 people, families and businesses in a week through 1727 policies of life, critical illness cover, family income benefit and income protection placed on risk. Annualise that and we're writing 75,000 policies a year.

"In truth some of that scale is new to us; it arrived last month when Sergei and his team at ComparetheMarket yielded to our 5-year long effort to convince them to unite their online and offline user journey to better serve their customers."

The firm aims to write one in ten of all life, critical illness and income protection policies in the UK. 

Growth plans 

Baigrie also revealed that LifeSearch had "ambitious" growth plans for its business and the protection market.

He said: "We think the numbers make us the largest of these [adviser firms that Scottish Widows has classed as 'habitual writers' of protection] and in truth we see a vast even global gap for a firm of real scale and efficiency, one whose USP is simply that its people explain things online and off fairly and clearly with customers' best interests at heart.

"Simply put we think LifeSearch can become a very great business if we stay true to what we know to be right when it comes to serving customers best."

He added: "It's time to start exploring foreign fields. We seek our partner's permission to serve them here from a full LifeSearch branch in Cape Town, which in time can allow us to develop a model that suits the local market and take that learning and export locally suitable versions of LifeSearch wherever we can in the world."

 

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