Admiral Group

UK-based motor insurer
Last updated:
January 3, 2026
Company details
HQ
London, UK
HEADCOUNT
10000+
ORG TYPE
Corporate
SECTOR
Finance
About the company
Admiral Group is a UK-founded insurance and financial services group best known for motor insurance, alongside other consumer insurance and lending products through parts of the wider group. Admiral Group sells primarily direct-to-consumer and operates at national scale, with customer numbers reported at around 11 million. Admiral Group also runs international insurance businesses across multiple markets in Europe and North America. The company is Wales-based and has been a long-running FTSE 100 insurer.
Locations and presence
Admiral Group’s main UK footprint includes offices in Cardiff (Tŷ Admiral as the headquarters), Swansea, and Peterborough. Many early-career roles are hybrid but Cardiff-heavy, with some programmes requiring several weeks of in-person induction before moving to a 1–2 days per week office pattern.
Palpable Score
77.8
/ 100
Admiral Group is a strong early-career option for graduates who want structured rotations, real project ownership, and a clear support system, because Admiral Group runs multiple named graduate streams plus apprenticeships and work-experience routes. The main trade-offs are pay perception and consistency: the graduate salary is explicitly published and can feel low next to London-heavy peers, and some candidate experience signals still rely on role-by-role execution rather than one published standard.
Pillar 1: Early-career access

Score

16.5
/ 20
  • The company publishes a dedicated Early Careers hub covering graduate programmes, apprenticeships, internships, and a structured one-week work experience programme.
  • Admiral Group runs multiple graduate streams with rotational structures, including a 24-month core programme with four placements and specialist analyst/data tracks with longer analytical placements.
  • The company offers an 18-month Data Analytics Apprenticeship that explicitly targets applicants without a university degree and spells out the “no prior work experience in data or tech” requirement.

Pillar 2: Hiring fairness and transparency

Score

15.0
/ 20
  • The company sets out concrete, staged application steps on early-career listings, including a time-boxed online numerical test and an in-person assessment centre followed by a final interview.
  • Admiral Group includes practical expectations up front on some programmes, such as the possibility of early application closure, in-person induction requirements, and right-to-work constraints for the full programme duration.
  • The company publishes guidance on using AI tools during applications and states that AI use will not affect assessment, which reduces guesswork for candidates about “what’s allowed.”

Pillar 3: Learning and support

Score

16.5
/ 20
  • The company builds early-career roles around structured onboarding, including examples like a five-week induction for a graduate data programme and shared training plus teambuilding at the start of graduate schemes.
  • Admiral Group describes multi-layer support for grads, including a dedicated mentor, line manager, peer network, and a “grad buddy” model, alongside in-house training via the Admiral Academy.
  • The company funds qualifications and learning, including an external diploma route for apprenticeships and references to Institute of Leadership & Management qualifications and support for relevant external courses.

Pillar 4: Pay fairness and stability

Score

15.0
/ 20
  • The company publishes an explicit graduate-scheme salary (£21,000) and pairs it with a widely advertised employee share award of up to £3,600 per year after one year of service.
  • Admiral Group offers benefits that matter to early-career stability, including starting annual leave at 33 days (including bank holidays), pension matching up to 6%, and an employee assistance programme.
  • The company’s pay perception is a real watch-out because employee review summaries repeatedly flag “pay is low” and “starting graduate salary was low,” even with shares and benefits offsetting some of that.

Pillar 5: Early-career outcomes

Score

14.8
/ 20
  • The company reports a 70% retention rate for graduates from 2006–2018, which is a meaningful long-run outcome signal for a programme that has been operating for many years.
  • Admiral Group has solid aggregated employee sentiment on Glassdoor, including a majority “recommend to a friend” rate and strong culture and work-life balance category scores, which supports confidence in day-to-day outcomes for many teams.
  • The company shares examples of early-career progression that include internship-to-graduate moves and overseas placements within the group, but Admiral Group does not publish recent cohort-level metrics like intern conversion rates or time-to-promotion.