Redefining Car Insurance for the Digital Age

 

Before "insurtech" was a category, Swiftcover’s founders, creators of Churchill’s success, spotted a disruptive opportunity: bring speed, simplicity, and digital convenience to one of the most outdated consumer industries.

Reframing the Market: Making Insurance Frictionless

Car insurance was worth billions, but largely seen as a legal chore. Most providers were locked into paperwork, call centres, and outdated systems. Swiftcover identified a specific addressable market, time-poor, tech-ready drivers looking for fast, online solutions. Our mission was to help them win a meaningful share of market fast. With a radically streamlined offer and brand built for digital growth.

Strategic Moves: Delivering Growth Through Functional Value

  • Category Disruption as First Mover:
Swiftcover launched as one of the UK’s first fully online insurers, no paperwork, no call centres. This bold model immediately set it apart from legacy players stuck in the phone age.

  • Brand Proposition with Built-In Utility:
“Car insurance in 60 seconds” and “Get a life. Get Swiftcovered.” were more than taglines, they directly addressed the product’s functional advantage: fast, hassle-free coverage for a mandatory purchase.

  • Digital Experience Built for Conversion:
We stripped the journey to its essentials, quote, select, confirm. With a focus on speed, simplicity, and transparency, customers could get covered in under a minute.

  • Performance Marketing Engine:
We tuned digital media across four key propositions, Save Time, Save Money, Car Insurance in 60 Seconds, and Swift, Simple Cover. A real-time dashboard tracked policy acquisition and informed media optimisation monthly.

  • Balancing Fame & Function:
We created brand awareness with a punchy, memorable proposition, while ensuring digital convenience and price transparency converted that interest into policies.

Business Outcomes: Scaling Fast and Exiting Strong

  • 1M+ customers acquired in under 3 years

  • Sold to AXA Group for £273M in Year 5

  • One of the earliest and most successful digital disruptors in UK insurance

Functional Value Delivered

  • Digital Disruption: One of the UK’s first fully online insurers eliminated traditional pain and friction points.

  • User Experience - Time & Effort Saving: Full quote and policy in minutes unheard of at launch.

  • Transparent Pricing: Cut out intermediaries, passed on savings, built trust.

  • Branding with Utility: The brand was the product fast, simple, self-service.

  • Simplicity at Scale: A frictionless user journey drove conversion and loyalty.

  • Operational Agility: Live tracking tools aligned performance marketing with real-time acquisition goals.

Recent Projects

Working with one of the UK’s largest retailers, our team helped define, plan, and scope a comprehensive loyalty programme that now serves as the foundation for a wide range of functional benefits. What began as a retail initiative has evolved into a platform that extends well beyond shopping—integrating seamlessly into the daily lives of over 8 million users and driving long-term engagement, utility, and brand value.

Our team has played a central role in shaping the processes behind a newly established fund, purpose-built to support the innovation ecosystem by improving access to capital. Recognising the unique challenges faced by venture capital, growth, and private equity managers, we collaborated closely with private asset managers across Europe and North America to design systems tailored to the specific financing needs of this sector.

Many brands face challenges integrating acquired businesses, often lacking a clear strategy for whether the brand should remain, merge, or be retired.

Our work with a leading insurance firm, following multiple acquisitions has helped build stronger collaboration across the organisation and contributed to a 165% increase in market value.

 

What we believe in

  • For over two decades, we’ve been observing, understanding, and engaging with human behaviour in all its complexity, capturing what makes us unique and what brings us together.

    At FIT, our researchers immerse themselves in the real world, because we believe the best way to understand change is to experience it up close, from within.

  • As Nicholas Negroponte noted, we’re shifting from atoms to bits. Data is becoming central to everyday life. But data alone, no matter how big, isn’t enough. On its own, it doesn’t lead to the right decisions.

    We go beyond surface behaviours to explore emotions, fixations, and deeper human needs. What truly creates value? How can that value be captured, and scaled?

  • We design projects in partnership with our clients and stakeholders, knowing that collaboration leads to real impact and practical results.

    Using collective intelligence and design thinking, we create artefacts, films, books, prototypes, products, and narratives that drive meaningful change.