Professional Builder puts the questions to Ed Bevis, Commercial & Marketing Director, The Van Insurer on what the company can provide the trades.
For those who may not be familiar with The Van Insurer can you explain your business offering?
Ed Bevis (Ed): The Van Insurer is a dedicated van insurance price comparison website that is committed to helping customers get to their cheapest quotes as quickly as possible. Following its launch more than ten years ago, the site has sourced thousands of online and offline insurance quotations for customers across the breadth of the whole UK, ensuring that quotes from its high-quality panel of more than 40 insurance brokers are quickly matched to customer needs.
We recognise that buying insurance is time-consuming, so we aim to deliver consumers what they need, a competitive insurance quotation within about five minutes of starting their quote journey with us.
What benefits do your services bring to clients that your competitors might not?
Ed. Quotes obtained through our website are backed by our Cheapest Price Guarantee. If a consumer can find a cheaper like-for-like online quote from anyone else, we’ll guarantee to beat it.
Also, while the vast majority of our policy sales are through our website, we recognise that some people prefer the human touch and so our telephone line is always available to those customers who might like to talk through their insurance options if their personal circumstances or their van are not, let’s just say, standard!
We’re proud that 94 per cent of reviewers on Reviews.io would recommend our services and we average a 4.64/5 rating.
We’re avowed petrol heads as well (although we’re incredibly excited by the green revolution beginning to sweep the commercial van industry too), so we regularly post online content that helps to keep our customers informed of relevant van and insurance topics. Our social media platforms provide regular updates on sector news and what’s happening within the van community in addition to entertaining snippets and competitions.
Is there anything specific you would like to highlight?
Ed. We’re proud to offer van insurance for vehicles of pretty much every shape and size and our Cheapest Price Guarantee means that our customers always get a competitive quote.
We also cater for people who have modified their van and might struggle to obtain insurance because of those modifications by providing a dedicated phone line to a specialist broker partner who will be able to help them. We want to make sure every van driver can get the best insurance deal for their unique circumstances.
Taken as a whole, how would you describe the last 12 months for the company?
Ed. Obviously, it’s been a challenge for businesses of every size and in every sector. Lockdowns were difficult for us too, but The Van Insurer actually proved more resilient during the pandemic that we might have thought. The number of people we’ve seen getting quotes has continued to grow and we’re seeing interesting shifts in the make-up of people insuring vans, be that people who’ve been forced into a career change and now require van insurance, more female van drivers, selfstarters keen to make the most of market opportunities and, of course, key worker van drivers on the front line.
We’re committed to providing both new and existing customers with competitive quotes easily and quickly and we’ll continue to do so into 2022..
How has COVID-19 affected you your industry?
Ed. The past couple of years have really brought home to us the value that van drivers provide to the UK economy. We’ve been humbled to see the lengths people and their vans will go to in order to help their communities, often at great expense to themselves. So, while lockdowns have inevitably affected our market from a financial perspective, we’ve been inspired to re-double our efforts to make insurance buying one less thing for van drivers to worry about and wherever we can, giving a shout out through our social media to van-driving essential workers to whom we all owe so much.
What are your plans going into the future? Both short and long-term?
Ed. The motor insurance price comparison landscape is continually evolving, and we want to be at the forefront of developments to make consumers lives easier by ensuring our service is the best it can be. That could take the form of improvements to the process of getting insurance quotes through mobile technologies or working with the absolute best brokers in the market to deliver the insurance solutions that tech-savvy customers need at the right price. We won’t stand still and are committed to ensuring that everyone can access cheap, high quality van insurance quickly.
For more information on The Van Insurer, including its Cheapest Price Guarantee, visit www.thevaninsurer.co.uk
