One year on after Tempcover integrated PayPal, we caught up with their CEO, Alan Inskip, to see how they were getting on.
PayPal (PP): Tell us a bit about your business.
Alan Inskip (AI): We are the only UK-based intermediary specialising in the sale of temporary insurance products. Customers, 90% of whom are online, come to Tempcover for insurance to cover the short-term use of a vehicle. We started the business when my fellow founders and I realised how hard it was to temporarily add additional drivers or vehicles to existing, annual insurance policies. Most insurers in the market just didn’t have the processes or software systems in place to handle that sort of request.
PP: In what sort of circumstances might your customers turn to you?
AI: Our customers turn to Tempcover in a whole range of situations where they need access to short term insurance cover. This can include test-driving a new car, borrowing a friend’s van for a trip to Ikea or insuring a partner to share the driving on a long journey. However, when customers go online to find
temporary car insurance, it’s often an emergency situation; they need insurance that morning. This means speed of application and ease of checkout is absolutely critical for us.
PP: How do you ensure the application process for your customers is as friction free as possible?
AI: We minimise upfront data collection. In a typical annual insurance application, a firm collects 20-30 separate data points. With Tempcover, it’s just 5. New customers have an expectation that the process will be arduous and not very customer-friendly. They are very pleasantly surprised when it takes only 3 or 4 minutes and they have their insurance documents emailed to them instantaneously. That level of simplicity ensures we get excellent word of mouth recommendations.
PP: How has offering PayPal helped you and your customers?
AI: Deciding to offer PayPal was all about trying to simplify our customers’ checkout experience. As well as reducing the admin burden for our customers during the payment process, PayPal added a level of reassurance at a time when we were a relatively unknown brand. Express Checkout reduces the time and data entry required from a customer to make a purchase. They don’t even need their credit card, as long as they know their PayPal login. Express Checkout also provides additional information that insurers can use to validate the customer’s application.
PP: How has the growth of mobile impacted your business?
AI: Tempcover’s drive to continually improve customer experience was accelerated by the rapid rise of mobile commerce. Three years ago, around 30% of Tempcover’s online business came via a mobile device. Today, it’s 70% and growing quickly.
PP: You have now had PayPal Express Checkout integrated for over a year. What impact has it had on your business?
AI: The feedback from customers has been fantastic. Since offering PayPal, the firm has seen sales conversion – which Tempcover defines as policy sales divided by unique site visits – increase by a third. This improvement has been particularly driven by mobile payments. In a recent survey, Tempcover found that 26% of our customers said they would not have purchased the policy if PayPal had not been an available payment option.
Testimonials found on this blogpost are examples of what we have done for Tempcover, and what Tempcover has said about us. However, we cannot guarantee the results in any case. Your results may vary and every situation is different. No compensation was provided for these testimonials.