Smart Insurance saw a gap in the insurance market when it launched in January 2008.

It created a top-up policy which caters specifically to cover repairs of small dents on vehicles.

This acts as an extra to traditional insurance policies where such repairs often cost less than the excess.

With a national network of more than 700 authorised specialist repairers, Smart Insurance – Smart standing for Small Motor Accident Repair Technology – believes the policy helps keep vehicles in perfect condition which will also help protect residual values.

It markets its policy through dealers, carmakers and repair networks, and it can be an additional upsell to complement paint protection products such as Diamondbrite Premium.

Smart Insurance’s key strategy is to build partnerships with distribution sources, including dealers, manufacturers, retailers and repair networks. 

“Since its inception last year it has sold 5,500 policies from a zero base”

Through a culture of profit sharing, Smart is also assisting its partners to get more out of an existing customer contact.

Smart Insurance said: “The combination of our expertise, high quality service and a niche product coupled with our partners’ distribution provides a solid platform for a significant profit uplift giving us and our partners opportunity to provide a major additional F&I profit centre.”

Since its inception at the beginning of last year, it has sold 5,500 policies from a zero base and extended its partnerships with Mercedes-Benz Direct.

It has established supplier relationships which have robust service level agreements in place to ensure quality of service delivery and a technical infrastructure to support all policy administration.

Smart aims to generate annual sales of 200,000 policies within five years and offer a wide range of products which deliver long-term F&I profit solutions.

Excellent customer service to partners and consumers is important to Smart Insurance, which means repair work should be carried out to a standard that exceeds customer expectations.

Long term, it will also target the contact hire and leasing industry with a different product as well as expanding into European markets around 2010.

Launched as dealers struggle to move cars out the showroom, Smart Insurance believes its product brings the perfect solution to upsell and drive aftersales service back to the dealership.

“We have successfully delivered a brand new unique product-offering for the UK motor sector into the market within 10 months of launch, that provides a major F&I potential at a key time for the automotive industry,” it said.

Finalists

  • Envy Motors
  • My Garage
     

See the awards photo gallery.