Motor insurance solution specialist wins with CAP data

Award-winning motor insurance solution specialists Lloyd Latchford Schemes is going from strength to strength in its partnership with automotive financial services software house Codeweavers - thanks to innovative use of CAP data.

Lloyd Latchford won the coveted Insurance Times ‘Broker Innovation of the year 2007’ with a solution the judges declared “fits the category perfectly, is executed perfectly and has demonstrated real success” - a motor insurance quotation solution which is partly made possible by CAP data.

Working together, Lloyd Latchford Schemes and Codeweavers developed a search engine that checks some of the largest names in the market for the best deal, which can be fixed for up to three years for cars advertised on dealer websites. This innovation was made possible by mapping the insurance industry’s standard ABI codes with CAP codes, to enable instant quotations on individual unique vehicles.

For dealers it provides a welcome additional revenue stream, lost by many who were unable to comply with the Financial Services Authority’s increasingly tough regulatory rules around the sale of financial and insurance products. Dealers are therefore able to appear to customers to be offering competitive low-cost fixed-term insurance instantly and receive commission payments for each policy sold, without the need for potentially expensive FSA compliance.

Whilst this is especially welcome for smaller dealers, Lloyd Latchford’s ability to work with Directly Authorised dealers has also seen the product embraced by some of the UK’s largest banks, leasing, AM100 and media companies including AutoExposure. This relationship is particularly unique as they have integrated the solution into their stock module, allowing them to offer the facility to their 1400+ dealer partners.

Where the Lloyd Latchford Schemes system really delivers a win for the dealer is in its ‘web service’ functionality. This easy-to-integrate solution offers the completion of just one short form on the dealer’s site, taking just 40 seconds. The system will then instantly produce the most competitive quote next to every car on the site.

This opens up valuable new business opportunities to the estimated 50 per cent of UK dealers who are unable to sell insurance products directly to their customers, under FSA rules. According to Lloyd Latchford, for directly authorised dealers it beats their existing insurance partner offerings, which can be unimaginative or involve time consuming forms and in many instances include a hyperlink which takes the customer to a third party site, potentially never to be seen again.

The evidence so far is that participating dealers are selling more cars, more quickly, thanks to the convenience to customers who are able to get an instantly clearer picture of their ownership costs without the inconvenience of securing insurance quotations separately.

Lloyd Latchford Schemes Commercial Director Tim Hutton said: “CAP data has helped ourselves and Codeweavers pioneer innovative technology and played a major part in the ‘wow factor’ that is making this fixed term insurance solution so successful.”