Tempcover is an online short-term motor insurance company based in Fleet. Chief executive, Alan Inskip, founded Tempcover in 2006 after identifying a gap in the market for a cost effective, flexible and simple solution to insuring vehicles on a temporary basis. Its customers’ needs range from sharing the driving on a long journey to using a larger vehicle to help them move house. Since its inception, Tempcover has gained recognition for its world-class customer service and won a host of awards. We interviewed Alan to get his tips on building a market-leading business.
PayPal (PP): What has been your greatest success?
Alan Inskip (AI): We’ve worked very hard to build Tempcover as a market-leading business, and it’s paid-off. We’ve been nominated, shortlisted or won an award every single year since we launched. Each award is special in its own way – they all reflect a particularly successful project or innovation we’ve executed. We recently reached the milestone of having sold 1.5 million policies which is a huge achievement but our plans don’t stop there. We want to increase awareness of short-term insurance and introduce more short-term insurance products to the market.
PP: What is the greatest challenge you faced in setting up your business and how did you overcome it?
AI: Running a small business is always a challenge. No two days are ever the same - even now when the business is considered established! The biggest challenge we have faced, and are still facing, is increasing the awareness of the insurance products we offer. We have to try to reach our target market in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Being an online business, we use Google to drive traffic to our website but we have complimented that with a run of three different television advertisements. In addition to Google, we are beginning see the benefits of using various cost-effective social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Ensuring we have a presence across a range of channels is crucial in reaching our target audience.
PP: What advice would you give to other small businesses and those thinking of taking the plunge and creating a start-up?
AI: Tempcover was born of a few drinks with a bunch of us insurers. Whilst insurance is still very much branded as an annual product, we thought we could change that. You don’t buy a year’s worth of potatoes, do you? Identifying a gap in the market where you can offer customers a choice opens up great new opportunities. It’s not always clear to see where an idea might lead you but it’s worth pursuing because otherwise you’ll always be wondering ‘what if?’.
PP: How did you start working with PayPal?
AI: We started offering PayPal on 9th March 2015 because our customers can often urgently need insurance. For example, needing to drive a different vehicle immediately either because theirs is being repaired or they are moving house and need a bigger vehicle. Being able to purchase online quickly and seamlessly without even having to be physically near their wallet was important. We also wanted to give our customers a broader range of payment options, in line with other major retailers. PayPal was an obvious choice as it was crucial that the customer and business are protected if something goes wrong. We have amalgamated the new processes quickly and easily into our business – it’s a good fit.
We know we’re one of just a few insurance companies who offer PayPal as a payment option. We’re proud to be leading the way (yet again!) in changing the way customers purchase insurance.
PP: Has using PayPal helped your business? How?
AI: It’s been less than a month since we went live but we can already see that a proportion of our existing customers have shown a preference for using PayPal. This is very important for customer retention. We believe over the next few months we’ll be able to demonstrate that PayPal has increased sales and hopefully our online reviews will prove that our customers find this payment option to be helpful. We are the only short-term insurance provider which offers PayPal so hopefully it will consolidate our position as the UK’s leading provider of short-term motor insurance.
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