In these uncertain post-Brexit days nothing quite says commitment like laying the foundation stone for a six-storey, 13,000sq m (140,000sq ft), new-build office development in the heart of Belfast.
Allstate NI, part of the largest publicly owned property and casualty insurance company in the United States, is undertaking the grade-A office development that will become home to its 1,300 Belfast employees in two years’ time. The US group promises to create a new level of workplace envy with, among other things, its river-view restaurant, adjacent boat marina and “sociable working spaces”.
According to John Healy, Allstate NI’s managing director, the decision by its American parent to commission a new headquarters on the banks of the river Lagan – as opposed to leasing a property – sets Allstate NI apart from the average foreign direct investor.
Significant investment
“It’s a statement,” Healy says, “It says Allstate is here for the long haul – and it is not just in Belfast that we are making this commitment – we are also looking at making significant investment by refurbishing our Strabane location, which employs 500 people, to make the facility even better,” he adds.
In total Allstate NI employs more than 2,300 people across three locations.
The American group began investing in Northern Ireland in 1999, choosing Belfast first before expanding to Derry in 2001 and then Strabane three years later.
It initially set up its operations in the North to provide software development services and business solutions to support its parent group’s global operations.
But, according to Healy, over the years Allstate NI’s role has grown to provide a greater range of services across the business.
“We’ve deepened the level of integration with what we do here. We’re building, testing and deploying the technology that is driving Allstate’s business in the United States,” he says.
Healy believes the group’s decision to support the development of a new Northern Ireland headquarters is not just a vote of confidence in its local workforce but is also a boost for the entire economy.
Allstate says its Belfast headquarters represents a £30 million construction investment. It also estimates that the project will support 150 construction jobs for two years while directly benefiting other local construction-related sectors during the build.
The US group’s new headquarters will not only increase the size of its current Belfast office but could also provide further room for the organisation to grow in the North – something that is very much part of Healy’s ambitions for Allstate NI.
New opportunities
He may be only seven months into the role of managing director but Healy, who was previously head of Citi’s Belfast service centre, is ambitious to find “new opportunities” for Allstate NI.
He believes Northern Ireland offers Allstate a value proposition that is hard to beat and that is why it has consistently reinvested.
“First of all it comes down to talent and the ability to recruit the very best people for the job – and that’s what Allstate has done in Northern Ireland and that’s going to delight any organisation on a global basis,” he says.
“Northern Ireland is also at the right price point when it comes to delivery, quality and cost, and although the cost is nice the most important thing that still makes Northern Ireland attractive to Allstate and other FDI is the pipeline of talent that exists. It is vitally important that Northern Ireland continues to maintain and build that pipeline of talent through schools, colleges and universities.”
One of the other strong selling points the North has he says – aside from its “cultural fit” with American FDI companies – is its geographical position that provides it with the opportunity to do business with Asia at one side of the day and the US at the other.
Brexit
At the moment, and although it may be a short-term bonus, Healy says Allstate NI is also benefiting, as a large exporter, from the Brexit vote’s impact on sterling and its poor performance on global markets in recent weeks.
But while the Brexit clouds may contain a silver lining there are, as Healy is keen to highlight, a lot of unknowns that could spark a storm.
“Allstate NI is a truly multinational workforce today and the talent that we have comes not just from Northern Ireland: it’s global. We have colleagues from Donegal that travel to work every day to our Derry and Strabane sites and our EU colleagues have helped make us what we are today.
“We’ll be keeping a watchful eye on what happens next because whatever Brexit means the outcome needs to deliver for us.”
