Blog

Belgian insurance consultancy Ensur has been the first to appoint a Chief Executive Officer to prepare for the next phase of growth.

Ensur was founded in 2014 as a management consultancy helping insurance companies design and implement changes and improvements. Six years later, Ensur has grown to a team of 50 consultants and employees with offices in Belgium and the Netherlands.

But according to Reinold Vanhevel, co-founder and inaugural CEO of Ensur, the past period is “only the beginning of the company’s growth story”. In the next three years, the owner-managed consulting company wants to accelerate its expansion and crack the 100-employee mark by the end of 2024.

Vanhevel (ex-PwC) was one of five who split off from Projective to start their own business and has been with the company since then in an executive role. His appointment as CEO coincides with a new organizational structure in which the company operates with four business units (Business Consulting, Risk & Compliance, Technology Consulting and Digital) and two brands (Ensur for consulting services and The Wave for technology and digital).

Three pillars form the core of its growth ambitions. On the one hand, the expansion of the service portfolio. Vanhevel: “Both Risk & Compliance and Digital are relatively new business areas on which we will focus even more in the coming years and for which we have brought in the necessary expertise.”

This pillar also includes efforts to expand in the financial services sector. First stop: the broker segment, which Vanhevel describes as “a very interesting target group with similar challenges as insurers”.

Second goal on the roadmap: international expansion. “We are determined to be more active outside the Belgian borders. In addition to expanding our current Dutch office (which mainly focuses on the pension and life insurance segments), we are also looking into opportunities to work in other European countries, ”said Vanhevel, without giving any further details.

The busy insurance industry – and the resulting need for change – is the third growth driver. Vanhevel outlines a number of urgent challenges: “Customers who want a Spotify-like experience, the need to be data-driven while overcoming data fragmentation and legacy systems, privacy and cybersecurity concerns, increasing regulation and growing competition from digital-first and digital Bigtech companies, to name just a few. ”

“It’s just not realistic that insurers and brokers would have the expertise and capacity to meet these challenges. At Ensur, we are passionate about the insurance industry and understand better than anyone the business challenges insurers and brokers face. We can translate these challenges into solutions and bring them to life. ”

The other co-founders of Ensur are Moustapha Kharbouch, Peter Knaepkens, Stephan Podevyn and Niki Serruys – they all hold management positions within the firm. The business areas are led by: Niki Serruys (Insurance Business Consulting), Patricia Goddet (Risk & Compliance) and Kris Claessens (Technology Consulting & Digital).