Budget Directs love affair with drivers and repairers

Budget Direct’s love affair with drivers and repairers

Growing rapidly in popularity among specific consumer groups and most panel shops is the relatively new insurer, Budget Direct. It offers low cost insurance policies to car owners and attractive work to repairers.
Budget Direct came to Australia at the end of 2000 as an offshoot of a 20 year old UK company, Budget Holdings Ltd. Already Budget Holdings is the biggest auto and general insurer in South Africa and one of the biggest in the UK.
In Australia, Budget Direct has focused its offer on the lowest accident rate drivers and has pounded them with mailers. They are also people who own middle to low cost cars. The results, according to the company’s literature, are 1600 new polices per week, with applications handled totally by telephone. A few qualifying questions place the applicant either in or out of the acceptance basket. Those who do qualify mostly find their premiums well under the mainstream insurers. A Choice Magazine survey showed Budget Direct as the lowest cost car insurer in most categories of driver profile.
In keeping with its money saving image, Budget Direct insurance works from very atyAlthough the company is seeking growth, it is not obsessed by it. Corporate spokesperson, Christine McHugh. She says that company employees respond well to the low stress Gold Coast way of life.
One of the features of a Budget Direct policy that contrasts it from most competitors is in the policy holder’s choice of repairer. National assessment manager, Damien Brock, details a repair process that would delight most body shops.
The shop shosen by the owner submits one quote for the repair and an independent assessor provides, in effect, a second quote. The usual time frame for a repair is assessment within 48 hours, and go-ahead within a further 48 hours. Where vehicles are damaged in remote areas, on-line assessment may be used, but the company prefers live assessment wherever possible.
Budget Direct follows the industry standard of specifying genuine new parts on cars still under manufacturer’s warranty but, after that, will allow recycled parts in keeping with a vehicle’s age.