Broker briefing: Beyond the man with a van

• Name of broker: Autonet Insurance Services
• Number of offices: One, plus a disaster recovery site
• Number of staff: 480
• GWP controlled: £80m
• Major sectors: Van insurance, commercial vehicle, personal lines motor, motorbike, household
• Senior management: Chairman Glynn Keeling, managing director Ian Donaldson, finance director Craig Ball, director of operations Phil Evans, compliance director Jenny Devaney

Autonet started out in 1999 as a personal lines broker looking for a niche. In 2002 it found that niche: van insurance.

The broker now has more than 100,000 vans on its books, comprising 70% of its business and making it the UK’s largest specialist van broker.

The firm has around 7% of UK van insurance market share, and chairman Glynn Keeling wants this to increase to 10% in the next two years.

Autonet won the Personal Lines Broker of the Year award at the 2010 Insurance Times Awards.

“Autonet is about van insurance; that’s what we understand,” Keeling said.

Moving up a gear

Keeling is confident the broker will reach £100m GWP by the end of 2012 and £150m by the end of 2014.

Autonet may have built a business around the man with a van, but Keeling doesn’t want to stop there. He wants to move more into SME insurance, driven by demand from its clients.

“We don’t do too much commercial just yet, but that’s one of our next big projects,” he explained.

Aggregator structure

Autonet has shaped its business around the four main van aggregators: Comparethemarket, GoCompare, Moneysupermarket and Tesco Compare.

“We work very intensively with them. We are the top player, or else a top three player, with all of them for van insurance,” Keeling said.

The broker designed four different brands to compete on aggregators, each concentrating on a different type of customer. Insurance4Vans, for instance, focuses on careful drivers who prefer policies with higher excesses.

The broker is also increasing its market share through referrals from the van trade and specialist van websites.

Referral fees

Autonet takes a “not insignificant amount” of money from referral fees, Keeling said, but he would be happy if they were scrapped.

“If it’s taken away from everybody at the same time, then it’s fine, because you just alter your pricing model accordingly,” he explained.

“The issue with referral fees is: how do you get them? If you’re handling it the right way, then for me it’s absolutely fine. We don’t do the ambulance-chasing type of thing.”

Taking fees meant Autonet could discount its prices, Keeling said, and warned that premiums could rise if fees were abolished.

Keeling dismissed rumours that Aviva was looking to buy Autonet. “There’s absolutely zero truth in that,” Keeling said. “People really are adding two and two and getting five or six.”

The key insurers on Autonet’s panel are Allianz, Ageas, Aviva, AXA, Chaucer, Groupama, LV=, Provident, RSA and Zurich.