Towergate Insurance: The Complete Guide for 2026

There’s a name in UK insurance that almost everyone has heard. Towergate. Maybe you typed it into Google after getting a quote that surprised you. Maybe your landlord mentioned it. Maybe you’ve been a customer for years and suddenly noticed something looks different on your renewal documents.

There’s a reason for that. And it’s actually a big deal.

This guide covers everything — the full history of Towergate, every type of insurance it offers, what real customers think, and the significant change that happened in 2025 that every Towergate customer needs to know about.

Let’s go through all of it honestly.

Quick Facts

Detail	Information
Founded	1997, by Peter Cullum
Incorporated	March 2, 1998
Headquarters	London, EC3R 7PD, Mincing Lane, 2 Minster Court
Type	Specialist insurance broker (not a direct insurer)
Policies Available	200+ specialist insurance products
Specialist Staff	2,000+ trained insurance specialists
UK Offices	70+ (now part of a 100+ office network)
Parent Company	Ardonagh Group
Previous Parent	Ardonagh Advisory Holdings Ltd
Current Brand	Transitioning to “Everywhen” from 2025
New Group CEO	Rob Worrell (Everywhen CEO)
Towergate CEO	Richard Tuplin (appointed March 2022)
Estimated Revenue	Around $750 million annually
Annual Premiums Placed	Over £5 billion (across Everywhen group)
Website	towergateinsurance.co.uk
FCA Regulated	Yes

How Towergate Started — A Story of Ambition

Most insurance companies start quietly. Towergate didn’t.

Peter Cullum had a clear vision when he launched the business in 1997. The big insurance companies of the time were chasing the same customers — ordinary people with ordinary cars and ordinary homes. Cullum went the other direction. He wanted to serve the customers that nobody else was really interested in. The niche markets. The unusual risks. The situations where standard policies simply didn’t fit.

That bet paid off faster than almost anyone expected.

Through the late 1990s and early 2000s, Towergate grew aggressively by acquiring other specialist brokers. Each acquisition brought a new area of expertise. Each one added another group of clients with specific needs that Towergate could now serve. By the mid-2000s, Towergate had transformed from a startup idea into one of the most recognized names in UK insurance brokerage.

The growth didn’t stop there. Towergate kept buying companies, kept expanding into new specialisms, and kept building its reputation as the broker you called when ordinary insurance wouldn’t work.

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The Turbulent Middle Years

Every great business hits a rough patch. Towergate’s came in the early-to-mid 2010s.

The company had borrowed heavily to fund its acquisitions. When the weight of that debt combined with market pressures, Towergate found itself in a precarious financial position. In 2015, the company went through a significant restructuring — essentially a financial rescue process. It was a difficult period that shook the industry’s confidence in the brand.

But Towergate came back.

New management came in. The books were cleaned up. The company stabilized and gradually rebuilt its reputation. By 2017, things had changed again — a new insurance broking group called KIRS was formed, pulling together Towergate, Autonet, Chase Templeton, Ryan Direct Group, and Price Forbes. That group then issued an £800 million bond deal to refinance existing debt.

Later that same year, KIRS rebranded as Ardonagh. Towergate became part of the Ardonagh family — which would grow into one of the most powerful independent insurance groups in Europe.

What Towergate Actually Is — Broker, Not Insurer

Many individuals have misconceptions about this. Towergate is not an insurance company. It doesn’t hold your money in reserve in case you make a claim.

Towergate is a broker. That means it sits between you and the actual insurers. You tell Towergate what you need. Towergate uses its relationships with over 200 insurance providers to find the most suitable policy for your situation. You get cover that fits your specific circumstances. The claimed money comes from the insurer, not from Towergate directly.

This distinction matters for a few reasons. A broker model gives you access to a much wider range of products than any single insurer could offer. It also means that when your situation is unusual — unusual property, unusual business, unusual vehicle — a broker can find something that works rather than squeezing you into an off-the-shelf product that doesn’t quite fit.

That broker model is exactly why Towergate built its reputation in specialist markets.

Every Type of Insurance Towergate Offers

Towergate organizes its products into six main areas. Let’s go through each one.

Home and Property Insurance

This covers your home — the actual building structure, your contents inside it, and the legal liability that comes with owning property. But where Towergate really earns its reputation is in the situations that most home insurers won’t touch.

Grade II listed buildings. Thatched roofs. Properties that have flooded before. Homes that have been left unoccupied for extended periods. High-value homes with expensive contents. These are the situations where standard comparison site quotes often come back blank or completely unaffordable. Towergate’s specialist knowledge means these properties can often be covered where others struggle.

Home emergency cover and family legal cover are also available, often included or added as affordable extras.

Landlord Insurance

This is arguably where Towergate’s reputation is strongest. Landlords have complex insurance needs that a standard home policy simply cannot meet.

Think about what a landlord actually needs to protect. The building itself. The fixtures and fittings. Loss of rental income if a tenant stops paying or the property becomes uninhabitable. legal responsibility in the event that a tenant or guest is hurt. And the legal costs if a tenancy dispute goes badly.

Towergate handles all of that. More importantly, it handles the situations that specialist landlords deal with — HMOs (houses in multiple occupations with several different tenants sharing), student lets, holiday lets, commercial properties, and entire property portfolios. These are the situations where big-name comparison sites frequently struggle to produce a usable quote.

Rent guarantee cover can be added as an option in many cases, giving landlords financial protection if a tenant stops paying without proper notice.

Commercial Property Insurance

Businesses that own their premises have different needs from residential landlords. Towergate’s commercial property products cover office buildings, retail units, warehouses, and mixed-use properties. This can include property damage, loss of income if the building becomes unusable, and liability cover for people on the premises.

Business Insurance

Small and medium-sized businesses make up a huge part of Towergate’s client base. The range here is extensive. Public liability. Employers’ liability. Professional indemnity for advice-based businesses. Product liability for manufacturers and retailers.

Trade-specific policies are a particular strength. Builders, contractors, plumbers, electricians, farmers — each of these has unique risks that Towergate has built specific products around. Instead of buying a generic business policy and hoping it covers everything, tradespeople can get a policy designed around the actual risks they face every day on the job.

The ability to pay monthly by direct debit makes this more accessible for small businesses managing tight cash flow.

Lifestyle and Leisure Insurance

People own things beyond their homes and cars that are worth protecting. Caravans. Motorhomes. Boats. Specialist vehicles. These sit under Towergate’s lifestyle category.

A caravan sitting in a storage facility for winter, an expensive motorhome on a European road trip, or a narrowboat on the inland waterways — all of these have specific risks that a standard home policy won’t cover. Towergate has products for all of them.

Care and Medical Insurance

Towergate operates in the health sector through its Health and Protection division. This covers healthcare businesses — care homes, medical practices, hospices — as well as individual health and life cover.

Although it is a component of the same organization, the employee benefits division is distinct from the primary insurance brokerage. It offers corporate healthcare, group pensions, and health and wellbeing packages for businesses of all sizes.

Motor Insurance

Personal and commercial vehicle insurance rounds out the range. This includes standard car insurance, but also specialist vehicles, fleet insurance for businesses with multiple vehicles, and commercial motor for vans and trucks.

What Makes Towergate Different

Most insurance companies try to be everything to everyone. Towergate took the opposite approach from the start.

The specialist angle is the core of everything. With over 2,000 trained specialists on staff, the business model is built around having people who genuinely understand the specific risks in each area. A specialist who understands HMO landlord liability isn’t the same person who handles marine insurance. Each team has deep knowledge in its area.

The broker model also means access to 200+ insurance products across multiple providers. No single insurer could offer that range. When a customer’s situation is unusual, having that breadth of access means finding a solution rather than turning someone away.

The ability to customise policies is another real differentiator. Many insurers offer fixed packages. Towergate’s approach — because of its broker model — allows much more flexibility in what’s included, what’s excluded, what the excess is, and what optional extras are added.

Long-term relationships are another thing that comes up repeatedly in customer feedback. Some customers have been with Towergate for 10, 13, even 15 years. You can learn something from that type of loyalty. 

The 2025 Rebrand — What Every Customer Needs to Know

Here’s the important news that caught many long-term customers off guard.

In May 2025, the parent company Ardonagh Advisory announced it was rebranding. The new name? Everywhen. It’s an old English word meaning “always” or “at all times.” The idea was to bring over 45 different trading names under one single, unified identity.

Throughout the rest of 2025 and into January 2026, those brands — Towergate among them — began switching over. As of January 2026, Towergate Employee Benefits officially became Everywhen. The general insurance businesses also moved to the Everywhen brand later in 2025.

What does this mean for existing Towergate customers? According to the company, nothing changes in terms of your actual coverage, your team, or the service you receive. The same people who handled your policy before are still handling it. The same expertise is there. The brand name is different. The phone numbers and service you relied on continue.

Some customers have noticed the change on renewal documents, which understandably created confusion. If you see “Everywhen” where you expected to see “Towergate,” that’s why. Same company, same people, new name.

The broader Everywhen group now employs over 4,500 people across more than 100 UK offices and places over £5 billion in insurance premiums for clients each year. Towergate Insurance’s roots, history, and specialists are all part of that story.

What Real Customers Say

Customer reviews are where you find the unfiltered truth about any company. Towergate’s reviews on Trustpilot show over 1,800 responses, and the picture they paint is genuinely mixed — in exactly the way you’d expect from a large, complex brokerage.

The positives come up repeatedly. Customers praise the depth of knowledge among staff. Long-term clients mention being with Towergate for 10 to 15 years. For complex and specialist needs — especially landlord cover and commercial properties — customers frequently say Towergate came through when other insurers couldn’t help.

The criticism tends to cluster around a few specific issues. One recurring complaint is aggressive follow-up calls after an online quote request — multiple calls per day with no voicemail left. That’s a real frustration. Some customers also mention handling fees that feel high for relatively simple sole-trader policies. And the rebrand period created genuine confusion for some long-term customers who didn’t understand why their documents suddenly looked different.

One specific complaint stands out as a cautionary tale. A customer who had renewed landlord insurance for nine consecutive years found that home emergency cover — which they had always included — was quietly dropped from their renewal quote. When they noticed and asked to add it back, they were told it couldn’t be added mid-policy. A nine-year customer, a coverage gap, a refusal to fix it mid-term. That’s the kind of experience that damages a long-standing relationship badly.

The honest verdict from reviewing hundreds of customer experiences: Towergate excels at complex, specialist risks where real expertise matters. For very simple, standard insurance needs, there are cheaper and less complicated options available.

Who Is Towergate Best For?

Not everyone needs a specialist broker. But some people genuinely do.

Towergate tends to be the right choice for:

• Landlords with HMOs, student lets, holiday lets, or property portfolios
• Property owners with unusual or high-value buildings
• Small business owners in skilled trades needing trade-specific cover
• Commercial property owners with complex premises
• Anyone who has been turned away or quoted unaffordably by standard insurers
• Businesses needing combined employee benefits, health insurance, and corporate insurance

It tends to be less ideal for:

• Standard single-property residential landlords who can get cheaper quotes elsewhere
• People who want to manage everything digitally with minimal human contact
• Anyone who hates phone follow-up as part of the sales process

How to Get a Quote and Manage Your Policy

Getting a quote from Towergate usually involves an online form followed by a phone conversation with a specialist. That’s the model. The online form captures the basics. The specialist then calls to understand the specifics of your situation.

This is different from the instant price-comparison experience of sites like Compare the Market. It takes more time. But for complex situations, the conversation is actually valuable — a trained specialist asking the right questions can identify coverage gaps or find a better-fitted product than an algorithm would.

Policy management can be done by phone, email, or through an online portal where you can save and retrieve quotes. Annual and monthly payment options are both available, with monthly direct debit carrying a small interest charge as with most insurance products.

Renewals come automatically with documents sent well ahead of the renewal date. The advice is always to actually read those documents carefully — the nine-year landlord customer story above shows why.

Final Words

Towergate spent nearly three decades building something genuinely useful in UK insurance. Not another comparison aggregator. Not another one-size-fits-all insurer. A specialist broker with real expertise in the situations where ordinary insurance falls short.

An important name change is the rebranding to Everywhen. The underlying expertise, the specialist staff, the 200+ products, and the network of relationships with leading UK insurers — all of that carries forward.

If you have a standard need, there are faster and often cheaper options available. But if your situation is unusual — if you’ve been turned away before, if your property doesn’t fit neat categories, if your business has specific risks that need a policy built around them — then what Towergate was, and what Everywhen now is, might be exactly what you need.

Just read your renewal documents carefully. Every time.

FAQs

1. What is Towergate Insurance? 

Towergate Insurance is a specialist insurance broker based in the UK. It doesn’t underwrite insurance directly — instead it uses its relationships with over 200 insurance providers to find the right policy for customers with specific or unusual needs. It was founded in 1997 and became one of the UK’s most recognized specialist brokers before becoming part of the Ardonagh group.

2. Is Towergate Insurance still trading in 2026? 

Yes, though the brand is transitioning. From 2025 onwards, Towergate’s parent company Ardonagh Advisory rebranded to Everywhen, and the Towergate brand is gradually being absorbed under the Everywhen name. The same team, the same products, and the same service continue — just under a different name.

3. What is the difference between Towergate and Everywhen? 

Everywhen is the new parent brand that replaced Ardonagh Advisory in May 2025. Towergate was one of over 45 trading names within that group. The rebrand brings all those brands under one unified identity. If you were a Towergate customer and saw “Everywhen” on your renewal documents, your policy is unchanged — only the name on the letterhead is different.

4. What types of insurance does Towergate offer? 

Towergate offers over 200 insurance products across six main areas: home and property, landlord, commercial property, business (including trade-specific), lifestyle and leisure (caravans, boats, motorhomes), and motor. It also has a health and protection division covering employee benefits, healthcare, and life insurance.

5. Is Towergate good for landlord insurance? 

Yes, particularly for complex landlord situations. Towergate has a strong reputation for insuring HMOs, student lets, holiday lets, multi-property portfolios, and other specialist landlord risks that many standard insurers won’t cover or price competitively. For a single standard buy-to-let property, simpler and cheaper options may exist.

6. Is Towergate an insurer or a broker? 

Towergate is a broker, not a direct insurer. It finds insurance products from its panel of over 200 providers and matches them to customer needs. The actual insurance policy is underwritten by one of those partner insurers. This gives customers access to a wider range of products than any single insurer could offer.

7. Is Towergate regulated? 

Yes. Towergate Insurance Brokers is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which is the UK’s financial services regulator. This means it must treat customers fairly, handle complaints properly, and maintain professional standards.

8. How do I get a quote from Towergate? 

You can start online at towergateinsurance.co.uk or the Everywhen website. For specialist products, the process usually involves completing an online enquiry form followed by a phone conversation with one of their trained specialists. Unlike instant comparison sites, the phone call is part of how they understand your specific circumstances.

9. Can I pay my Towergate insurance monthly? 

Yes. Both annual and monthly payment options are available. Monthly payment is done by direct debit. As with most insurance providers, paying monthly typically costs slightly more in total due to interest charges on the instalment plan.

10. How do I make a claim with Towergate? 

As a broker, Towergate handles the claims process on your behalf. You contact Towergate, who then liaises with the underlying insurer. The claims team can be reached by phone. Towergate also manages claim follow-ups and disputes with insurers, which is one of the real advantages of using a broker rather than going direct to an insurer.

11. What do customers say about Towergate? 

Reviews are mixed. Long-term customers — some with 10 to 15 years of loyalty — tend to speak positively about specialist knowledge and responsive staff. Criticisms include aggressive phone follow-up after online quote requests, high handling fees for simple policies, and occasional issues around renewals where coverage details changed without clear notice.

12. Who founded Towergate and when? 

Peter Cullum founded Towergate in 1997 with a focus on specialist and niche insurance markets. The company was formally incorporated in early 1998. It grew rapidly through acquisitions throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, becoming one of the UK’s most well-known independent brokers.

13. What happened to Towergate in 2015? 

Towergate went through a significant financial restructuring in 2015 after accumulating substantial debt from its years of aggressive acquisitions. The company was effectively rescued and rebuilt with new management, eventually stabilizing and going on to become part of the Ardonagh group.

14. Is Towergate good for small businesses? 

Yes, particularly for trades and professions with specific risk profiles — builders, contractors, plumbers, farmers, and other skilled trades. Towergate builds policies around the actual risks these businesses face rather than forcing them into generic business insurance packages. The ability to pay monthly is also useful for small businesses managing cash flow.

15. What is the Everywhen rebrand and does it affect my Towergate policy? 

Everywhen is the new unified brand for Ardonagh Advisory’s UK advisory businesses, launched in May 2025. The Towergate brand is being phased into Everywhen throughout 2025 and 2026. Your existing policy, coverage terms, renewal rights, and the people managing your account all remain the same. The only thing that is altering on your paperwork is the firm name. 

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