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Dartmouth Insurance Start-Up Could Be Big
The owners Zipsure.ca are moving quickly in the belief their new Dartmouth-based online insurance service can become the leader in Canada. AP Reid Insurance President Jamie Reid says he and his Zipsure.ca partner, AP Reid’s IT guru Paul Russell, have been working together on Zipsure.ca for about a year.
The site went live in September and has written nearly 100 tenants’ policies, all with the click of a few buttons and no human intervention.The speedy sign-up is possible because landlords like Southwest Properties, Killam Properties and Oxford Properties are registering their buildings with Zipsure.ca
When potential customers log on, they pick their building and the site loads up all the building details to provide a quote in a matter of seconds. If acceptable, online customers signs up for the month-to-month service by submitting banking information or a credit card.
The rates, arranged through Ontario-based insurance firm Echelon, are lower than regular tenant policies because the administration is so minimal, said Reid.
Major landlords in the city have been happy to register with Zipsure.ca and promote the service within their buildings.
Landlords usually require tenants to have insurance, but in Nova Scotia only about 25% of tenants are insured.
Landlords are not gaining any financial benefit from Zipsure.ca, but the can log in at no charge to the back-end of Zipsure.ca to check to see which tenants are insured.
By March, Reid and Russell expect to launch Zipsure.ca in Ontario beginning with Nova Scotia landlords who also operate in Central Canada.
And then there is a plan for a French Zipsure.ca in Quebec.
Following that, Zipsure will expand to offer other types of insurance like ZipCondo and ZipTravel.
Reid would not disclose the cost to develop the IT program but says it was all done in –house at AP Reid by three developers.
There is nothing like Zipsure.ca in Canada, he says, and he is anxious to march it out as quickly as possible to become the market leader.
“We feel that in Nova Scotia there are about 30,000 uninsured tenants and our target is to take the lion’s share,” says Reid.
“You start looking at the very large markets in Ontario and BC, we could be up into the hundreds of thousands of tenants.”
