Arron Banks sets up offline van broker

Brightside founder Arron Banks behind a new van insurance broker which will rival his old firm.

Footprint Insurance will specialise in van policies to be sold offline, and is targeting £20m gross written premium (GWP) from 30,000 policies in the first year. It has already written £2m in GWP since a soft launch two months ago.

Footprint is a trading style of Banks’ firm Eldon Insurance and backed by a “wider than usual” panel of non-standard underwriters, the company said.

Around 23% of its capacity comes from Southern Rock, the Gibraltar insurer owned by Banks.

Footprint will target leads from telesales calls and van dealers, to whom it will pay commission if their customers go on to buy a policy.

Banks has named Lance Testa, former Brightside head of sales and commercial vehicle direct, as managing director, and its former marketing manager, Jaimie Hanley as marketing director.

Testa also works on van sales for Go Skippy and Hanley on marketing projects for other brokers within Eldon.

Banks left Brightside in June, and launched Go Skippy, an online insurance brand selling car and van insurance, at the beginning of the year.

Testa said: “We’ve ensured that Footprint is fully equipped with experienced staff and we will work with our insurer partners  to put in place whatever protection measures are required, including ID checking, credit scoring, fraud checking and CUE checking, which will help us to build a solid and sustainable business model for both ourselves and our valued panel members.

“The support we have had from insurers so far has been brilliant and the way we repay this is through ongoing distribution and profitable growth for all parties.”