Type Limited Company Products Financial services Headquarters Liverpool | Industry Finance and Insurance Website www.choicequote.co.uk Founded 1995 | |
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Key people Cathie Bruce, Managing Director Parent organizations Groupama, GUK Broking Services Ltd. Profiles | ||
ChoiceQuote Insurance Services is part of the GAN UK Group, the UK broker division of Groupama Insurances.
ChoiceQuote currently employs around 70 staff at its head office in Liverpool, with other branches in Manchester and Glasgow.
History
1995 Phil Catterall purchased a small personal lines insurance broker with a premium income of £1.5m located in Manchester, England and executed a business plan to focus on niche, non-standard motor insurance with initial emphasis on taxis and motor trade road risks.
Expanded into Liverpool by opening a new office.
1996 Relationship established with MMA Insurance PLC ("MMA") to co-develop products and provide the majority of their capacity.
Introduced Motor Trade Road Risks.
1998 Strategic co-operation initiated with Equity Red Star, one of Lloyd's of London personal lines syndicates.
2000 First broker to launch website with buy online motorcycle insurance quote engine.
2004 First broker to launch online taxi insurance quote engine.
2005 Diversified product offering by moving into commercial vehicle insurance.
In-house development team recruited to create bespoke online quote engines, point of sale branded products and aggregator integration technology.
Equity Motor Trade Road Risk underwriting authority granted.
2006 IT platform created in conjunction with SSP to provide backbone for major policy count growth.
2007 Standard and non-standard private car insurance introduced as part of its direct offering.
Invested in new telephony system, contact centre software and dialer to help drive efficiencies and growth.
Opened satellite sales offices in Birmingham and Glasgow to provide field risk selection intelligence for regional taxi and fleet sales.
Took non-standard car product live with aggregators uswitch.com, confused.com, gocompare.com and moneysupermarket.com.
Exclusive arrangements with an insurer agreed in order to deliver non-standard products online.
2008 Private car panel expansion initiated with several major insurers.
Acquired by Groupama UK.
Cathie Bruce appointed as Managing Director.
2009 A new taxi insurance office opened in Glasgow's Pacific Quay in September 2009.