Direct Line has had a truly eventful history and since its first car insurance policy was sold in 1985 it has since become one of the leading insurance providers in the UK. Read more about the largest car insurance companies in the UK.
Selling not only cheap car insurance but policies for home, pet and holiday cover, just how did a company that started with only 63 employees become so successful?
A history of Direct Line
Direct Line was created in 1984 with the notion that car insurance could be sold to customers over the phone, making it simpler for people to obtain insurance policies compared to the standard process which required a handful of forms to be filled in.
Peter Wood founded Direct Line hoping that his company would be the first motor insurance provider to sell policies over the telephone, cutting out the middle man as well as costly paperwork. As well as achieving this goal, Direct Line also became the first company to open its offices in the evening, on Saturdays and offered its customers a 24-hour helpline.
With the help of £20 million funding by the Royal Bank of Scotland, Direct Line sold its first motor insurance policy on 2nd April 1985 from its head offices in Croydon, which housed just 63 members of staff who were all on hand and ready to answer calls from people wanting cheap car insurance.
From that point forwards Direct Line expanded rapidly and in 1990 the car insurance provider launched an advertising campaign which displayed a chirpy red telephone on wheels offering people in need of cheap car insurance the opportunity to make a call to Direct Line.
The advert was seen by millions of television viewers who became familiar with the heroic telephone that would dash into a room to save a customer from taking out a costly insurance policy from a man sat at a desk with shed loads of paperwork.
This advertising campaign benefited Direct Line greatly and soon regional offices were opening in Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and Leeds, offering a variety of policies to the millions of customers who wanted to take out insurance. In the first year of offering home insurance, Direct Line sold over 80,000 policies, which lead the way for even more opportunities in non-insurance products including personal loans, mortgages and savings accounts.
In 1998 the man who created Direct Line, Peter Wood, left the company and paired up with the Halifax and Bank of Scotland group to start esure, a car insurance provider that specialised in offering polices to people who have at least four years no-claims bonus. This scheme was created with the belief that by excluding high-risk drivers, esure would be able to offer cheap UK car insurance policies to its customers.
Despite the departure of the company's founder, Direct Line welcomed the new millennium and launched http://www.directline.com in 1999, offering its customers online car insurance at their fingertips. The ever so famous red telephone adverts were redeveloped and included a computer mouse that also went to the aid of people wanting a cheap car insurance quote.
In the same year that Direct Line embraced the internet, the company bought the road recovery service Green Flag Group and now offers breakdown cover to more than a million customers.
Only a year later and Direct Line launched a motoring website called http://www.jamjar.com, listing new and used cars sold at 30 per cent below the UK listing prices. The website has since become one of the largest car retailers on the internet and provides shoppers with everything from car accessories to traffic information.
The car insurance provider branched out even further afield in 2002 and launched Direct Line in Italy and Germany, offering cheap car insurance quotes to an even bigger market. In 1995, Linea Directa was launched in Spain and has since become the country's leading motor insurance provider.
Since its beginning back in 1985, Direct Line has grown at an incredible rate and now employs over 11,000 members of staff with more than 7.5 million policy holders throughout the globe. It has become one of the UK's leading car insurance providers to offer easy and affordable policies and with such a vast history can only have more in store for its customers in the future.
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