"My First day at Admiral…” The stories that started it all.

The decades-long career that almost never was

Tim Phillips’ story begins with a ‘sliding doors’ moment - he nearly didn't show up at all.

27 years ago, he was due to attend an Admiral assessment day "I wasn't going to come," he admits. "And then I decided - what have I got to lose?"

On that day, Tim remembers he took part in a desert island survival exercise and a role playing session involving a broken vacuum cleaner, but something must have felt right, as he went on to spend the next two and a half decades in claims.

He's now the operational lead for Admiral Loss Adjusting Services (ALAS), overseeing a nationwide team of in-house adjusters and surveyors who manage household claims from first visit all the way through to settlement.

Ask Tim what's made the difference over nearly three decades at Admiral, and he keeps coming back to one word: trust.

"I've got a bit of a scatter gun brain," he says. "I quite like working in claims, because from one hour to the next, you’re working on different things." Managing that kind of mind, he's found, requires a particular kind of leadership - one that sets a direction and then gets out of the way.

"You have to be able to make your own mistakes, to make sure you don't make them twice." The managers who've got the best out of him, he says, are the ones who've understood that instinctively. Now, on the other side of that relationship, leading his own team of regional managers spread across the country, he's trying to pay it forward in the same way. "It was hard for me to let go of the finer details," he admits. "But there was always a mutual understanding between me and my team that once I trust them, they can carry on and deliver.”

The results, he says, speak for themselves. "I see the relationships that they've managed to build and the results they’ve achieved. It’s fantastic - especially bearing in mind ALAS has only been going for three years.”

23 years and still opening doors 

Gemma Hopkin-Evans’ first day is also lodged firmly in her memory, though for different reasons. She arrived at Admiral for an interview on St Patrick's Day 23 years ago.

She was suited up and excited but couldn't figure out how to get in the front door. She remembers panicking at that point: “I was thinking “oh no! My interview is in 10 minutes - let me in!"

She made it through and has been making her mark ever since, progressing through customer services, underwriting, claims, training and project management before recently stepping into her first team management role at Admiral Law, where she leads a team handling personal injury claims for children.

Not every move Gemma made within Admiral worked out, and she's refreshingly honest about it. After years thriving in the fast-paced world of volume claims, she stepped into a role in large loss, handling serious injury cases.

It wasn't for her. "The claims were weighty and took longer. There’s definitely a certain type of person who would thrive seeing those large, complicated claims through to resolution, but I preferred the fast pace of a high-volume environment” she explains. After a couple of years, she made the call to step back out, into another role. It's something she now actively encourages in the people she manages - the idea that a sideways step or a U-turn isn't always a failure, and that Admiral will support you.

It wasn’t long until Gemma was back in a high volume claims role where she felt most comfortable and laying the groundwork for her path into the role she’s now thriving in, as a Team Manager in the Infant team within Admiral Law's Hybrid department, working on personal injury claims where children are involved. 

Somewhere to stack up your skills

For Cindy, who joined Admiral Law in 2023 as a paralegal, the first impression came before she even walked through the door. "You get sent a little welcome box to say welcome to the firm." Something small, she says, but the kind of thing that tells you a lot. "It makes you feel so welcome and really invited."

Her first day itself was largely icebreakers: ironic, she notes, given she now runs them constantly as one of three trainers in Admiral Law's centralised learning and development function. Two years on, she's heading to Delhi to deliver a four-week induction for an entirely new team, in a department she's never worked in before. It's exactly the kind of challenge she gravitates towards. "I can get bored if I’m static for too long. I like being in a fast-paced, almost stressful environment. I like urgent deadlines and having to adapt."

Cindy is clear-eyed about where she's heading. Trained in law, armed with experience as a paralegal and a master's in law business management, qualifying as a solicitor is still very much the destination. But she's not in a rush to take the most direct route.

Her recent move into learning and development, on the surface a step sideways from her litigation career, in her view only strengthens her all-round experience.

Every new department she trains in means another area of law she has exposure to. Every induction she designs means sharper communication, sharper thinking, a broader understanding of how the firm actually works. And it’s been noticed by others too, because in 2025 Cindy won an award for Outstanding Contribution to Admiral Law.

"I'm big on skill stacking, not narrowing myself” she says “Admiral really helps me do that.”

Bigger than ever, but still recognisably Admiral

Three very different first days; three very different careers. But beneath the memories of ice-breakers, role-plays and dodgy front doors, everyone points to one thing that kept them coming back: The people.

“On my first day the operations manager came in to say hello, and people at all different levels in the business would stop to say hi and welcome.” Cindy recalls. "You wouldn’t get that everywhere - certainly not in Law”

“It helped me feel more comfortable to ask questions. Knowing you’ll get support makes it more comfortable to put your hand up and say, I don't really know what's going on. Can you help me?"

Gemma says much the same thing. Even back then, twenty-three years ago, when Admiral was a smaller business than it is today, the induction was warm and people-first. "Everyone was really friendly. A lot of people joined and we were young - we didn't really know what we wanted to do with our lives, but a lot of us stayed, I think, because of that welcome."

Tim has watched that culture survive and adapt across nearly three decades of growth - from a few hundred people to over eleven thousand. "We've still managed to keep our original ethos" he says. He sees it now in the relationships his regional managers have built with a workforce scattered from Scotland to the southeast coast, remote workers who come together quarterly and, somehow, still feel like a team.