DAS 100%

Insurance Brokers' Monthly and Insurance Adviser, Feb 1998 by Susman, Brian

Having maintained their unique 100% record at the Insurance Broker Industry Awards in December, the DAS people in Bristol were still floating on a fluffy pink cloud when I visited them recently. Not surprising, really. They have been voted best Legal Expenses Insurer and ULR Provider of the Year each year since those categories started. Not only that, they're friendly and hospitable people, too - a telling combination.

Only trouble is, they now have to keep winning the awards. Anything else would come as a considerable shock to the system, particularly as any other winner might well turn out to have been an organisation started up with talent originally developed at DAS; the legal expenses market remains a fairly closeknit community, at its most respectable end, with more than a hint of incestuousness about it.

For the time being, DAS management are rightly enjoying their years of glory - and it doesn't just stop at the awards. General manager Paul Asplin, talks in terms of another good, profitable year, enhancing the status of the UK organisation as the "blue-eyed boys" in the corridors of power of the DAS parent organisation in Germany. I must say that it makes a welcome change to be receiving messages about current levels of profit in whatever the sector of the UK general insurance market.

My visit more or less coincided with the extension of the DAS authorisation by the DTI to include insured assistance products. From the start of the year arrangements are in place for a range of motor.assistance products in conjunction with major insurance retailers; similar arrangements are being negotiated with insurance companies.

Paul Asplin says that the "high quality" and "competitive rating" being offered on entering this market "... has been achieved by building upon our experience in administering uninsured loss recovery schemes and by working with agents who are able to deliver significant policy volumes through electronic trading links."

The DAS call centre in Bristol has been beefed up for the purpose, with additional technology and more operators to man the 24-hour service.

It is expected that, following the motor assistance service, DAS will enter the insured domestic assistance market, with a range of products primarily available as extensions to household insurance covers, both with and without legal expenses insurance.

There is also the free telephone advice service on medical and fitness matters, recently added to the helpline facilities. I gather that Prime Health and Bristol Contributory Welfare Association are among the first customers.

However, Mr Asplin emphasises to me that "the foundation of our business will remain as a legal expenses insurer". The operation used to be very largely ULR-service based; its management appears to be relieved that that is no longer the case. That is, after all, a crowded and volatile market, where some extraordinary deals are now being offered to brokers, with car hire operators looming large in the background. Mr Asplin is quite scathing about some of the newer and smaller operators in that sector, where brokers are constantly being asked, "Where are the claims? We must have the claims", the objective being to satisfy the car hire operators.

"Spread" is much in vogue at DAS these days. Not only is that so in the classes of business that it transacts, but also in the organisations it does business with. A greater number of sizeable accounts makes it less vulnerable if one of them should suddenly decide to up stumps.

There is a new corporate structure, too. DAS UK Holdings Ltd is now the holding company to which all UK and Irish subsidiaries report. And Paul Asplin has been appointed to the board of the holding company as well as becoming a director of DAS Legal Expenses. He is to become managing director of those companies when the current chief executive, Tony Holdsworth, retires from his full-time post as MD in February 1999. That will indeed be the end of an era, for Tony Holdsworth has been the face (and the voice) of DAS for almost as long as I can remember. In fact, he started there in the summer of 1975 and has been at the helm of DAS through various ownerships and varying fortunes until its present highly successful period.