OneClickCover first partnered with Insly when the company was just starting out in 2017. In this interview with Insly’s Hammad Mirza, OneClickCover Founder and CEO, Hutton Swinglehurst, and its CTO, David Orr, reflect on how the business has grown in the last eight years, and the value of Insly’s technology and support.
“I was pretty sure that I’d pick the right software development partner when we started, and I’m absolutely certain now.” Hutton Swinglehurst, Founder and CEO, OneClickCover.
Simplifying home insurance
OneClickCover is the brainchild of Hutton Swinglehurst, who started the business “from a PowerPoint presentation” in 2017. Now a fully regulated MGA operating in the highly competitive UK home insurance market, the company is differentiated by its tech and data-driven solution, which streamlines the process significantly.
Rather than asking customers to complete lengthy forms, OneClickCover can provide a fully underwritten and guaranteed quote based purely on the property address. The aim, Swinglehurst says, was to emulate the “one-click buying experience” of sites like Amazon.
“The traditional home insurance experience is essentially driven by aggregators, where price is everything and experience is nothing,” he says. “The customer has to answer 70 or 80 questions just to get a quote. So, OneClickCover is all about trying to enhance the customer experience.”
Building a business based on broker relationships
OneClickCover has primarily grown on the back of its broker distribution offering, having built a loyal network of partners.
“We’ve concentrated on the B2B side to establish the business, prove the technology, prove our underwriting performance, and give the carriers that comfort support us,” says Swinglehurst.
For brokers, the benefit of the technology is clear, meaning they can cross-sell OneClickCover home insurance alongside products such as motor or pet cover, simply by knowing the customer’s address. This avoids lengthy questionnaires and makes it a much easier sell for the customer.
“If a customer has just been talking to somebody in a call centre for 45 minutes to purchase motor insurance, they’re not interested in talking for another 40 minutes to purchase home insurance. With OneClickCover, the broker only needs an address, and we can provide a quote,” says Swinglehurst.
While its broker business has thrived, Swinglehurst has found the consumer market “a tougher nut to crack.” This has led the company to focus on distribution via embedded insurance partnerships, which is a key focus for the future.
“Gone are the days when you can launch a direct-to-consumer brand through TV campaigns, as the return on marketing investment isn’t there,” he explains.
The right technology foundations
Whatever the strategy, the OneClickCover system works the same on the back-end and simply needs to be “tuned” for different partners, as David Orr, CTO, explains.
“There is a consistent engine driving both journeys, where we’re taking over 450 data sources to understand what a quote should be priced at,” he says. “We have a baseline set of pricing and then we can fine-tune the different pricing constraints based on client requirements, connected to our system via a simple API.”
The company’s tech-driven approach has enabled the business to grow steadily despite a challenging market, including the pandemic, price inflation, and reluctance amongst carriers to support home insurance.
“We’ve been able to grow the business aggressively without having to expand the team too aggressively,” says Swinglehurst. “That’s one of the advantages of being a software-driven business.”
Working with Insly
OneClickCover has been working with Insly since the early days, and the flexibility of the system has been crucial in building their innovative insurance engine.
“With Insly, we’ve taken what is essentially an off-the-shelf product and built an enormous amount of proprietary IP into that system,” says Swinglehurst. “Insly provides the root system level workflow that we need so we can focus exclusively on building the differentiator part of the business, which is the data piece, the quoting, decision-making, and the AI piece.”
The OneClickCover team has also been impressed with the Insly team, appreciating their combination of market knowledge and technical skills, which means they understand industry jargon that can trip up generalist developers.
“It is a relationship built on trust and transparency,” says Orr. “We have direct access to the Insly team, and our team always makes time for them. We’re one team and, having worked in different industries for years, you really appreciate when you have that level of partnership.”
Building the B2C business in 2026 and beyond
Going forward, OneClickCover is focused on building its nascent B2C offering by working with aggregators and embedded insurance solutions, building partnerships with companies such as banks, building societies, property portals, and mortgage brokers.
“That’s something we would really love to crack,” says Swinglehurst. “We’ve done it in small ways in the past, but we’d like to work with a headline provider and explore aggregator relationships by developing our Hoot Home Insurance brand. We have several opportunities in development at the moment, which will hopefully launch in early to mid-2026.” Visit OneClickCover
