Growth often comes with change, but for this Hawke’s Bay insurance broker, one principle has remained constant: treat every client as equally important.
From personal and rural policies, to large commercial portfolios, the business has built its reputation on providing the same care, expertise and commitment to every client who walks through the door.
This is how Hurford Parker has grown without straying from what built it.
Three years after Cyclone Gabrielle tested the firm to its limits, and with Jeff Parker stepping back from day to day management after three decades at the helm, son William has stepped up as managing director, quietly building something bigger than the business he now leads. Jeff continues to be an active director and key adviser to William and the team.
Hurford Parker, based in Hastings, is now widely regarded as Hawke’s Bay’s leading independent full service broker, with the scale to compete for large commercial accounts and, crucially, no intention of forgetting where it came from.
“It’s important to not forget how we’ve become successful,” William says. “We’re not going to grow for the sake of growing. It has to be sustainable, and it has to look after each client, whether that’s a personal client or someone paying over a million dollars in premium.”
Building the bench
William’s uncle and experienced insurance broker Mike Caulton has come on board as a contractor to assist with the firm’s latest growth ambitions.
Mike has over 35 years’ experience in the insurance broking world, mostly in the large international broking houses in Hawkes Bay, Wellington and Auckland transacting and placing insurance programmes for larger commercial, government and corporate based clients in both in New Zealand and London insurance markets.
Mike is based in Taupo but is a regular visitor to Hawke’s Bay. His arrival, alongside experienced broker Lisa Treloar and newcomer Pip McFaul, has given the firm genuine bench strength at exactly the moment William needed it most. Lisa is based in Waipukurau, building Hurford Parker’s presence in the rural community there and across the wider region.
“Both Mike and I have worked for big international firms,” William says. “People don’t always realise we’ve got the experience and the capability to do the big stuff, because of where we’ve worked.”
For Mike, the move is the culmination of something he describes as unfinished business.
“I think I’ve still got fifty metres to the end of the hundred metre race, and I wanted to give it to William and Hurford Parker. I didn’t want to give it to anyone else,” he says.
His own family has insurance in its blood, his grandfather was a senior manager at one of New Zealand’s major insurers, and Mike describes Hurford Parker as the kind of business he always admired: fearlessly local and independent and committed to going the extra mile for its clients.
It is, increasingly, a family affair. William’s sister Kate has joined to manage the finance function, working one day a week and involved in strategy with William and Jeff.
William’s brother in law Roberto is also part of the team.
“It’s a true family business now, five of us across different areas, while we think of all the Hurford Parker team as part of our extended family,” William says.
Winning the big accounts
The commercial logic behind the expansion is straightforward. Larger clients want technical depth and specialist policy knowledge, the kind that used to send them looking at global corporates by default.
Hurford Parker’s pitch is that it can match that capability without the transactional, renewal-by-renewal service some bigger firms are known for.
“We’ve picked up a lot of these clients demonstrating our clear value proposition,” William says.
The clients who built it
Crucially, none of this comes at the expense of the smaller clients who built the business in the first place. Personal, rural and small commercial accounts still make up the bulk of Hurford Parker’s book, and William is adamant they always will.
“Some of our competitors have made it clear they don’t want to deal with smaller clients anymore, this is not our view, some of our larger clients started off as small businesses and we have grown with them,” he says.
“We’re not interested in saying what others aren’t doing. We’d rather just say what we are doing and let people read between the lines.”
That philosophy extends to accessibility. As managing director, William makes a point of staying connected to as many clients as he can, large or small, much in the style of his father. He still takes calls from any client personally, regardless of the size of their premium, and says Jeff does the same.
“I’ll pick up the phone for someone insuring one car, or a business paying over one million dollars a year. That hasn’t changed and it’s not going to.”
Scale without selling out
Hurford Parker remains a founding member of NZbrokers, a group of forty eight independent New Zealand brokerages that between them place more than a billion dollars in premium for around 140,000 clients nationwide.
It is the model that has let Hurford Parker grow without selling its independence, giving it leverage with insurers that a standalone local broker could never match alone, and without becoming the kind of firm William says he was actively trying to avoid building.
“Scale doesn’t have to come at the expense of local relationships,” he says. “In fact, our local roots are one of the reasons we’ve been able to grow. We’re proud of what we’ve built, but we’re even more focused on what comes next.”
Meet the new team members
Mike Caulton — an impressive book built over decades
Mike Caulton spent thirty five years at the top end of global insurance broking, before joining Hurford Parker as a senior insurance broker. Based in Taupo and a regular visitor to Hawke’s Bay, what he brings isn’t just experience, it’s relationships.
“Your big players, your NZIs, your Veros, your QBEs, they’re all run by people I have had extensive professional relationships with,” he says. Even the major international underwriters operating in New Zealand are led by people he’s crossed paths with throughout his career.
For Mike, those relationships are about more than convenience, they’re about outcomes for clients when it matters most. “It’s so important that those relationships are there. They just help our clients so much, especially at claim time.” Being able to pick up the phone to the people making decisions, rather than working through a call centre, is exactly the kind of access Hurford Parker’s clients continue to benefit from.
Lisa Treloar — bringing rural to the table
Lisa Treloar joins Hurford Parker after thirteen years at a large global corporate, and the shift is one she’s been ready for. “The willingness to be flexible, the whole relationship thing, actually being able to help clients in all aspects of their insurance,” she says, is what drew her across.
Based in Waipukurau, Lisa knows the rural Central Hawke’s Bay community from the inside. “You see your clients at the supermarket or at the sports ground.” Her commitment to her clients is what drives her, both making sure they’re covered and being there at claim time, where it counts. “I care about people. If you’ve had a house fire, I’m going to turn up. That’s my thing.”
Pip McFaul — the old-fashioned way, done well
Pip McFaul came to insurance almost by accident, after seventeen years in telecommunications, but found her strengths, relationships and empathy, translated perfectly. As Hurford Parker’s life and health adviser, she’s spent the past six months getting to know an established client base while building new relationships across Hawke’s Bay.
What sold her on the move was a conversation with William Parker about culture. “The way he spoke about the team, and how important it is that we work well together, really mattered to me.” Some may regard the firm’s approach as old fashioned, but if that’s what good customer service looks like, Pip takes it as a compliment.
