Mobile explosion prompts Rock Insurance to develop white label for the trade

Rock Insurance has developed a white label mobile site for travel agents after seeing searches through the channel on its consumer brands rocket.

Rock Insurance has developed a white label mobile site for travel agents after seeing searches through the channel on its consumer brands rocket.

Managing director Antony Martin said some of its best growth is coming from mobile with its direct businesses seeing 40% of searches on handheld devices.

Rock has lined up a number of launch trade partners for its new mobile application, said Martin.

The broker is also about to start selling its gadget insurance, Mygadgetbuddy, through the trade.

Martin said sales of gadget insurance through its direct mygadgetbuddy.com brand “were incredible last year”.

He said customers were bundling the cover up with their travel insurance and then coming home and upgrading to annual gadget insurance.

“We test bed all our products by selling them direct first and this year we are going to roll it out with our travel trade partners,” he said.

Mygadgetbuddy offers iPhone insurance from £3.99 a month covering theft, breakdown and fraudulent calls.

Although travel insurance has been a tough sell for agents since the FSA started regulating it and from online competition, Rock believes they are well placed to offer it as part of the booking process.

Some of Rock’s biggest growth is coming from OTAs, like Travel Republic, which has integrated insurance into its sales flow.

However, more traditional agents like Midcounties Co-op are also seeing significant growth and trade sales were up 20% in January overall.

With cover of British holidaymakers now at historically low levels – Abta estimates 24% travel abroad uninsured – Rock says agents should stress the spiralling cost of medical treatments abroad.

Martin said in Spain the cost of medical treatments is up 73% this year, in Egypt it is up 66% and in Turkey 16%.

“Every year we are seeing it increase by the same amount,” he said. “We give agents lots of training on how to sell to the consumer.

“The biggest piece of training is to get them to price products against who they are competing with like aggregators and the online players.

“We think agents still have the best opportunity to sell insurance at the point of sale if they price it right.”