Brightside looks online for van solution

Brightside aims to secure 10% of the van insurance market inside four years, after relaunching its proposition to target the aggregator market.

Brightside Van, developed with the online customer in mind and optimised to be mobile responsive, went live on 28 April, backed by a panel of insurers including Axa, RSA, Ageas, Covea, NIG and Premier. It’s expected to go live on two major aggregators before the end of this month.

Van proposition director at the broker, Neil Laird said, ‘Fifty percent of traffic comes from mobiles and the journey has been built with that in mind. Customers can self-serve online. It is exclusive to Brightside, branded as Brightside and gives us a real foothold into the online channel.’

He continued, ‘The UK van market is worth between £600m-£1bn annually and we estimate that there are between 2.6m-3.5m vans on the UK’s roads, depending on vehicle classification. Brightside van focuses on standard risks and is a volume play to give us a much bigger footprint in this key market. Our target is privately owned vans, representing an addressable market of around 50 percent of the total.

‘The product complements Brightside’s offline Commercial Van direct (CVD), Brightside’s specialist proposition, together providing cross-market coverage.’

Brightside hopes the launch will increase its competitiveness in the sector.

Neil added, ‘Brightside has a strong tradition in private car, and that will continue, but private van is a market where there are opportunities to strengthen and develop our business.

‘This is a big and positive step forward for our team. We expect to make further improvements to the basic package, including a young van driver product, breakdown cover with existing strategic partner the RAC, and ancillaries including legal, and replacement tool cover.’