Travellers on tall ships gazing at white sails unfurling against a blue sky while the rigged masts groan have a one in five chance of being covered by JS Travel Insurance.
It’s the culmination of a strategy conceived in 2010, when, says manager Chris Hollingsworth: “We could see that the travel insurance market was quite overcrowded and decided to specialise in a different kind of travel insurance.”
Amongst the specialist travel coverage offered by the East Sussex-based brokerage is a golf travel insurance policy, backpacker insurance, and coverage geared to cruise travellers alighting in numerous far flung countries.
Also available is a sports and activities portfolio that includes such pursuits as gorilla trekking, banana boating, hot-air ballooning, ski biking, sand yachting, glacier walking, and paragliding.
JS Travel Insurance is part of Jade Stanley Ltd, a firm launched in 1999 which, in a visionary move, leveraged the communication potential of the then-nascent internet, at a time when there were perhaps only two competing firms doing business online.
“The internet was very young then, but we could see the potential,” says Chris, who with his brother, founder Daniel, runs the firm.
In those early days the firm was geared towards ski insurance, the legacy of which remains in the form of its bespoke winter sports website.
The technology focus remains, manifest in the energy expended on the firm’s websites – “It’s an ongoing business of keeping us visible on the net,” says Hollingsworth.
And it seems to be working. The company typically gets first-page Google ranking for any search on adventurous travel insurance, and Hollingsworth estimates he has approximately 25% of the market.
Jade Stanley has now issued policies to over 750,000 customers. Jade Stanley Ltd is underwritten by White Horse Insurance Ireland Ltd who are authorised and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
