Start-up digital broker Policy Powerhouse targets over £20m GWP within five years

“We have a five-year target of hitting north of £20m of premium,” he told Insurance Age.

The firm was launched in last year bringing out its first product Cancel Cover – cancellation insurance for holiday let owners – in October.

The rollout started with an exclusive arrangement for Premier Cottages and the policy was recently opened up to all potential customers.

The latest addition, Holiday Let, delivers the ability to insure one or many properties on a single policy with a single policy fee and discounts for multiple properties.

Simplicity

According to the broker, it has developed a five-step process for obtaining a policy minimising manual data input beyond any other platform to date through partnering with property data supplier WhenFresh.

The buyer enters the address and all necessary property and risk related questions are instantly ‘pre-answered’ within the platform, by pulling in data via the WhenFresh API, it detailed arguing this removes the need for clients to complete lengthy, complex forms, making the process of obtaining a quote much faster and simpler.

A third product, targeting holiday homes, will be released next month, Bibby confirmed.

Team

Bibby was previously CEO of Ceta. He joined after it underwent a management buyout in 2017 and stepped down in July 2020.

Planning for Policy Powerhouse started shortly thereafter and it now has five staff including chief operating officer Steve Dixon and technology director Ashley Smith who Bibby has known for years.

The initial idea was to look for niches, he said pointing out that large insurers tend to be good at lines such as standard home and motor while specialist brokers are good at non-standard but tend to be very small with limited systems.

“The concept for Policy Powerhouse is to have the technology, data enrichment and digital marketing capability that large insurers have but focus it onto specialist areas,” he stated.

Continuing: “There is a logical process from cancellation insurance to holiday lets through to insuring holiday homes. We are looking at other sectors as well to do a similar thing. We start off with a unique product and build off [it].”

Technology

The firm has worked with Vesuvio Labs to create a bespoke platform for its needs. “It is not an off-the-shelf system,” he observed.

On cancellation cover it has partnered with Euroins Insurance Group, a Bulgarian insurer passporting in to the UK, while the principle carrier for holiday lets is managing general agent Modus Underwriting through Ergo and ultimately backed by Great Lakes.

Holiday homes will be delivered through an arrangement with UK General, Bibby continued as he noted that the long-term plan is to widen each product’s panel with providers having different appetites and picking up different options.

“Ultimately other insurers will come and join on the same programme,” he said.

AR

The broker has launched as an appointed representative of Bennett Gould & Partners.

“We have made no secret of the fact that this is a stepping stone,” Bibby detailed. “We will run with BGP for a period of time and then we will look to go directly authorised.

“They have been really good and their compliance team has been really helpful and it has made it quicker and easier for us to come to market.”

The timing of the transition may be “sooner than a couple of years”, he calculated.

Users of Policy Powerhouse get access to a portal containing saved quotes, policy details and all their documentation.

“Everything we do is digital first but we will make ourselves very easy to contact and communicate with,” Bibby committed adding that as the business grows it will expand with contact centre capability.

“It will be a facilitation to support the digital activity,” he maintained. “We will provide offline support to take someone through a sales process but will put them back onto the platform to complete the process.”

Early stages

Bibby acknowledged that Policy Powerhouse is at the “the very early stages”. Currently it is in a “test phase” with around 50 users of the cancellation product being serviced by the five members of staff.

Cross-selling, such as the holiday let offering to those who buy the cancellation product and vice versa, is part of the plan for reaching the £20m goal.

However, in his view, there remains a “long way to go in the holiday sector” and plenty of opportunities beyond this to reach the financial targets.

Other sectors could be drawn from property, business and leisure but Bibby said the broker is not limited in its outlook. “It is all about things that don’t quite fit the usual insurance mould,” he added.

“We will be opportunistic.”

Concluding: “The one thing you won’t see us doing is anything that is standard market. We are always looking for niches. It is things where bigger insurers wouldn’t want to put their time and effort into building separate platforms, systems and admin processes.

“It is too small for them but if we can do, in their terms, lots of small niches then suddenly we end up with quite a significant business.”

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