BGL, a Peterborough success story has laid the foundation to potential future expansion with the opening of its new £10 million office in south of the city.
Buoyed by the success of its subsidiaries such as price comparison website giant Comparethemarket.com, the BGL Group has consolidated its position in the city by opening Saxon House, in Bakewell Road, Orton Southgate, last Thursday.
The 30,000 sq ft building lies adjacent to BGL’s head office, Pegasus House, and currently has 200 staff working there, some 161 of whom work for Comparethemarket.
Mayor of Peterborough George Simons officially unveiled the building with BGL chief executive Peter Winslow last Thursday in front of the great and the good of the city’s business community.
There is the potential for the new building to bring the creation of hundreds of extra jobs in the next few years, but Mr Winslow said that the immediate aim was about consolidating its premises
He said: “Expansion is not a direct result of this, though we are employing more and more people all the time, it’s about getting ourselves logistically consolidated.
“We have a five-year strategy in place and that plan seems to indicate there’s every chance we will [continue to improve].”
Unsurprisingly, the two floors of the new Comparethemarket.com office are adorned with the meerkat theme which has given the company its biggest boost, with murals of Aleksandr Orlov dominating the wall as you enter the third floor office.
But Mr Winslow was keen to point out that while Comparethemarket takes the plaudits as its best known brand, the other subsidiary to move into Saxon House, ACM, is equally important to the success of BGL, which employs 1,600 people in Peterborough alone.
ACM is the company’s claims management business arm, which provides an immediate response - like organising courtesy cars or repairs - to claims from customers of BGL’s own websites, or on behalf of insurance providers such as Marks and Spencer and the Post Office.
Mr Winslow said: “We have about 2.5 million customers insured with us, as well as acting on behalf of other providers.
“It’s a well-run business and it’s very important to us.”
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