Chris Slater

Chris Slater helped turn Simply Business from a tiny start-up company into one of the UK’s largest online business insurance providers in less than ten years. He is now on a mission to change insurance for all small businesses across the world driving their first international business outside of the UK; launching the business in the US in the fall of 2016. Co-founding and launching a new way for small businesses to get protected in 2005, he has been a driving force behind the company becoming the leading insurance broker for small and medium sized UK businesses. The firm has been phenomenally successful, generating annual revenues of over £60 million, recently selling for £400m to Travelers , and currently insuring over 435,000 customers across the UK. Today Simply Business employs more than 450 people across its London and Northampton offices, has a growing team of over 30 people in Boston, Massachusetts, and has won the Sunday Times Best Company to Work For in both 2015 and 2016. Most recently the business has achieved B-Corp accreditation, enshrining the social and environmental values the business has been built on in creating a new force for good within the corporate landscape. Now responsible for developing Simply Business’ expansion into new markets, Chris is primarily focused on launching the US business, looking to harness the same capability of a group of lean product development specialists and commercial team, an agile development platform and an award-winning operations team that has delivered success in the UK, to deliver a great customer proposition to the US small business community. The launch is imminent. Prior to working at Simply Business, Chris worked in a number of roles at Royal & SunAlliance, including a role on the MORE TH>N launch team, and he currently invests in and advises to a number of start-ups across a range of sectors, as well as advising and supporting a number of charitable ventures including the UK’s largest enterprise education charity, Young Enterprise. Chris holds a BA in Economics from University of Liverpool and an MBA from Cass Business School. Chris shared his experience of the JA Company Programme in UK with Young Enterprise: “With start-ups you’re dealing with similar challenges that you face during Young Enterprise. You’ve got to profile your customer base, do market research, get backers, get the business operational and come up with a brand. Young Enterprise whetted my appetite for business (…). It taught me some important lessons about the dynamics of people in a business.” www.simplybusiness.co.uk