Ben Thornton

Director of e-trading

Ben Thorton

What's your role in the business:

My teams ensure that we have a coherent strategy and set of plans to deliver our ambitions for the business and our customers. NIG continues to rapidly develop and evolve as we bring our strategy to life and I'm lucky enough to have five teams who are right at the heart of that change including a large customer-facing team of underwriters in Peterborough looking after our packages account.

What's the best bit of advice you've ever been given:

You have to love what you do, if you don't then you're doing the wrong thing.

Describe yourself in 3 words:

Enthusiastic, committed, driven

2012 was a big year for NIG, what are you most proud of:

2012 was the year that we started to deliver against our strategy rather than think it up. There are any number of proof points of which I'm proud : launching our NIG First proposition, the splash we made at BIBA, a series of high quality product launches - they're all real proof that our customers will benefit from our strategy.

What is your focus in 2013 and what does success look like at the end of the year:

This year we're heavily investing in ecommerce, we're continuing to bring new propositions to market and we're redefining how we interact and trade Micro and SME insurance - all of that exciting change comes through my teams and getting it right is crucial for us and our customers. Success is NIG being even more of a business that our brokers can't be without, a business that has built new solutions around their needs and that is recognised publicly for its service and skills.

How do you live the NIG values for the benefit of our customers:

My main responsibility to our customers is to identify and bring great people into our business. This is the same whether its head office subject matter experts who will design a strategy around customer needs or bringing great people into the front line to interact with our brokers. I'm enormously proud of the teams I have but love nothing more than welcoming another fantastic member.