U K Insurance Limited (UKI) - Direct LIne

m2_225288

Has Direct line been purchased by someone?


Note - Direct Line is planning to transfer its customer policies to U K Insurance Limited (UKI) from December 2011. UKI is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Both Direct Line Insurance plc and UKI are members of the insurance division of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group.
The change will not affect your insurance cover. To find out more, visit: ukitransfer.com/directline but the link does not work

andygb

Wow, what a coincidence!
I am with Direct Line at the moment and just rang Churchill to get another quote. It appears that Churchill are transferring to UKI in December, as you say, part of the RBS group.
I was trying to get away from Direct Line because they use Drive Assist to provide acourtesy cars in the event of an accident. The problem is, that Churchill use Drive Assist as well!

huckster

UKI has always been part of the RBS Insurance stable.

I suspect that this is a strategic move, as by 2013 RBS has got to sell off RBS Insurance following a decision by the EU. When RBS were bailed out by the UK government, under EU state aid rules, the government were forced into making some changes. As they own 80%+ of RBS, there was a problem with RBS Insurance holding too high a percentage of the UK market.

My guess is that Direct Line and Churchill 'the brands', will be sold off. The brands are probably worth more than their portfolio of policies at the moment, as they have been loss making in recent times.

RBS Insurance is also reported in the news, as being in the process of combining its underwriting departments. At the moment they apparently have separate departments for each of its brands.

m2_225288

huckster wrote: »

UKI has always been part of the RBS Insurance stable.

I suspect that this is a strategic move, as by 2013 RBS has got to sell off RBS Insurance following a decision by the EU. When RBS were bailed out by the UK government, under EU state aid rules, the government were forced into making some changes. As they own 80%+ of RBS, there was a problem with RBS Insurance holding too high a percentage of the UK market.

My guess is that Direct Line and Churchill 'the brands', will be sold off. The brands are probably worth more than their portfolio of policies at the moment, as they have been loss making in recent times.

RBS Insurance is also reported in the news, as being in the process of combining its underwriting departments. At the moment they apparently have separate departments for each of its brands.

The link DL has on their web site does not work h**p://w#w.ukitransfer.com/directline but when I check h**p://w#w.ukitransfer.com all it got all the info

(remove the ** with tt and # with w)

InsideInsurance

I think it is much more straight forward than that.....

RBS Insurance currently have a number of legal entities with underwriting authority; for each of those they must maintain a whole series of capital models and hold capital to ensure they have sufficient readily available funds to pay claims. With the legislation in Solvency II making this whole section of insurance regulation more onerous many insurers are consolidating their legal entities to simply their structure and therefore reduce the amount of capital they must hold.

UK Insurance has been owned by RBS Ins from its inception and was historically for underwriting its white label business (eg Tesco Insurance & Citroen Insurance).

RBS Ins is up for sale or will go through an IPO if it isnt sold in time. I would be exceptionally surprised if there was any intention to sell any of the brands as RBS will raise plenty of income from an IPO