Admiral, part of the Admiral Group, is a car insurance specialist which launched in January 1993. Its head offices are in Capital Tower, Cardiff, Wales. It also has offices in Swansea and Newport and Halifax, Nova Scotia. It shares these with its sister companies elephant.co.uk, Diamond Insurance and Bell Insurance.
The Admiral Group floated on the London Stock Exchange in September 2004, it is currently the only FTSE100 listed company headquartered in Wales. It employs more than 3,500 people and has more than 2.5 million customers. The company’s turnover was £1.58 billion in 2010.
Admiral traditionally specialized in providing car insurance for those who traditionally had higher premiums; younger drivers who lived in urban areas, primarily in London, the South East England and Scotland. However since the advent of price comparison sites, it has insured a far wider cross section of motorists.
In December 2005 it launched Admiral MultiCar, which enabled 2 or more people in the same household to insure their cars on one policy and get a discount on the overall price. Admiral advertises that this product is only available directly and not through price comparison sites.
Admiral also auto-renews car insurance at the end of each year. This enables customers to have their payment card debited and their insurance renewed without having to remember to do it. Admiral will perform this whether or not the customer still owns the car until instructed to do otherwise.
Admiral’s charity of the year for 2011 is Samaritans.
Admiral has been listed in the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For list every year since its inception. It has also been named in the Great Place to Work Institute’s list of Best Workplaces in the UK every year. It has been named Welsh Company of the year 3 times; in 1999, 2005 and 2009.
Henry Engelhardt is CEO of the Admiral Group and Sue Longthorn is currently Managing Director of Admiral.