It’s often a challenge working in the insurance industry, because we essentially provide a product that customers don’t actually want to use. No-one wants their pet to become sick, or their house to suffer a flood or burglary, or their business to experience a cyber-attack.
But it’s the potentially devastating physical impact these events can have, along with their financial implications, which mean we turn to insurance to provide protection against the many risks that life presents.
Whilst there are many, many different types and size of business in the UK, most will have the ability to purchase similar types of commercial insurance cover, for example Material Damage, Business Interruption, Employers and Public Liability and so on. But their route to those products may differ.
For many years the insurance market could only be accessed via brokers, then insurance providers looked to remove the ‘middleman’ by offering their products directly to the customer/insured. When Direct Line launched in 1985, it became the country’s first direct car insurance provider (although it has since expanded into other product lines).
The reason why the Direct Line model was successful, and then copied by many others, was that the car insurance selection and purchase process is reasonably straightforward. The insurer will ask the insured plenty of questions to gather the information they need to provide a quotation, but the quotation has limited moving parts – in the main it’s the level of cover (comprehensive, third party etc), the size of the policy excess, and sometimes additional bolt-on covers are offered such as Legal Expenses. Usually, it’s fairly easy to distinguish between the various elements and decide which combination is best suited to your requirements.
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