Henry Engelhardt: 'We're always trying to learn how our customers want their calls handled'

A Day in the Life: Henry Engelhardt, chief executive of insurer Admiral Group, explains why excellent service is key to its continued success

6am

Henry Engelhardt hails from Chicago but his morning regime makes him sound more like a Californian fitness fanatic. He's up at 6am and straight down to the exercise room at his home in Cardiff, where he has several fitness machines. He speaks highly of the pilates machine to which he was introduced by his French wife. Then it's breakfast. "We are really into smoothies so I make a giant fruit smoothie for the family," he says. "I'm a big fan of fresh juice, too. My wife kept giving it to me when I got ill one time and it really worked, so I always have fresh juice."

Having said goodbye to his four children, the 48-year-old likes to be on the road by 8am. Commuters in the Welsh capital have an easy time of it, compared to those in London, but school-run traffic can add up to 20 minutes to a journey, and he likes to be in his office by 8.25am.

8.25am

The first thing Mr Engelhardt does on any day is delve into his management system, which enables him to gauge the performance of the business the previous day. He has been an integral part of Admiral for 16 years, and was recruited from another insurer – Churchill – by the Brockbank Group to set it up.

Admiral has been quoted on the stock market for three years and operates a bewildering array of brands. The chances are that any televions viewer will be familiar with at least one of them, whether it is Admiral, Diamond, Elephant.co.uk or Confused.com. Then there is Bell, Gladiator Commercial and the Spanish business Balumba.es which, from its logo, appears to be some sort of caterpillar.

"The system means I can look at sales and claims. It gives me detailed information on the business, so I can see what sort of day we had," Mr Engelhardt says. After the obligatory e-mail and postal check, he meets a couple of the company's managers to listen to calls made to either the claims, sales or customer service departments – hence the standard call centre warning that "calls my be recorded for training purposes". This is not so much about Big Brother as it is about learning, Mr Engelhardt insists. "It may just be that someone will ultimately just get a message from the CEO saying 'Good call', but we always learn something, about what customers want, and about how we handle calls, in these sessions."

9.30am

Mr Engelhardt takes a call from the managing director of the aforementioned Balumba – a division he says is "hugely important". Admiral is deep in the throes of an international push, which is also set to include Italy and Germany. Mr Engelhardt says: "There are differences in Spain. It is limited liability for a start and, while in Britain 80 per cent of people take comprehensive cover, in Spain it is the other way, with 80 per cent of people on third party or third party fire and theft. But consumers in the UK and Spain are like brothers compared to Germany." How so? "Well, the Germans really like to buy German for a start and they want their insurance company to have been around for years. They like to be insured by the people who insured their Dad." This means using the Elephant brand is a non-starter, as is that cheeky Spanish caterpillar. In Germany, the company will trade as Admiral Direkt but, despite the difficulties, Mr Engelhardt is upbeat. "Germany will be a challenging market but I truly believe the internet is an irresistible force," he says. "The 21-year-olds out there are using it to buy things and people will use it to buy insurance."

10am

Mr Engelhardt usually speaks to one of his senior managers or, as he does today, his managing director of managing directors, to look at another of Admiral's operations. This time they discuss the company's call centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It seems an unusual place for a call centre, most of which have been set up in low-cost locations such as India. Admiral is there also but uses Halifax to deal with evening calls, exploiting the time difference. "The costs are probably only a little lower than in Britain," Mr Engelhardt explains, "But we are there because the service they provide is phenomenal."

10.30am

Mr Engelhardt speaks to his head of investor relations about preparations for releasing the group's results. The news will be good for the company – which has enjoyed sparkling performance in the City – but less so for its customers, who will be told to expect rises of between five and six per cent in their annual motor insurance premiums after a similar rise this year. Mr Engelhardt argues such rises are necessary after four years of flat premiums between 2002 and 2006. "The costs of claims are inflating," he says. "Whereas, once, if someone drove into the back of your Range Rover, you'd have had a Fiat Punto as a courtesy car while it was fixed, you now have lawyers demanding another Range Rover and it all adds to the cost."

One mitigating factor, says Mr Engelhardt, is that the number of accidents per car is falling and the increase in the level of compensation awards from the courts has begun to slow. He follows this important session with more calls, and takes a look at how the team at Admiral's Italian division is doing.

12.15pm

Mr Engelhardt heads into the centre of Cardiff for a coffee and a sandwich. He also uses the opportunity to run errands or pick up shopping. At 1pm, he meets the head of the group's German business before a short talk with his finance director, then replies to his growing in-box of e-mails.

3pm

Interviewing potential staff takes up a fair amount of Mr Engelhardt's time. Today, he meets two Italians applying for a role in "people services" – Admiral-speak for human resources or personnel. He says he prefers to take an informal approach with candidates but has some harsh words for recruitment agencies. "I am often surprised by how often they clearly haven't done anything to coach candidates. I always start by holding up someone's CV and saying 'this is all I know about you, talk me through it'. How they do this says a lot about their character, and character is a huge part of whether they get the job or not. What surprises me is how many spend ages going through the detail of their CVs without tailoring it to the job they are going for."

More controversially, he is a great believer in graphology – the study of handwriting to reveal character – and claims it is a highly effective tool for selecting suitable candidates.

5pm

Mr Engelhardt meets his marketing team. Admiral's ads are ubiquitous and its brands hard to avoid, so this is an important part of the company's strategy. He heads home at 6.10pm. Mr Engelhardt says he does not need to wind down after the day because "work is not stressful, golf is stressful. Work is interesting". He spends the evening with his family, perhaps in the garden "if it's not raining, and it usually is".