Car insurance

The car insurance company that might have annoyed you a lot with their advertising catchphrase ‘calm down dear, it’s a commercial!’ is being sold. Lloyds Banking Group, the current majority shareholders, are selling their 70% stake to the founder of the company, Peter Wood.

Peter Wood and his fellow managers already own 30% of the car insurance company, which serves more than 1.5 million customers through its website based system.

Car insurance

Car insurance

Esure specializes in car insurance, but also has smaller parts of the company working on various other products such as health insurance, travel insurance and pet cover. The company itself is a well known brand, but it has only ever made very small profits.

Analysts recognize that the price that Peter Wood has managed to purchase the company for is competitive, or even on the cheap side. The cost will be around £185 million when the deal goes through.

General insurance, and car insurance in particular is a very difficult area to make money in, especially if you are not the number one in the sector. During the economic downturn there have been a surge in fraudulent insurance claims, and the increase in the number of personal injury lawyers has pushed premiums and costs in car insurance both up.