With more than 220 clients and £6 million in gross written premiums, you might think that LDPA Credit Insurance, based in Portishead, near Bristol, wouldn’t need to change anything about its business. However, the company has instead completely rebranded itself – partly due to some serious customer confusion.
“I remember when I first started that people told me if you’re going to have initials in a company name, don’t have more than three – and there you go, we were LDPA,” commented Tom Rolfe, co-owner of the now rebranded The Channel Partnership, formerly LDPA Credit Insurance, speaking exclusively to
Insurance Business UK. “It seems that LDPA more neatly drops down to LAPD, the initials of the Los Angeles Police Department, and as much as I’d like to be a motorbike-riding, leather-jacketed member of the LAPD… I do credit insurance.”
Confusion with the LAPD was in fact just the beginning of the problem.
“The LAPD was the most mis-quoted one,” continued Rolfe. “However, thankfully we didn’t get any calls reporting serious incidents in the California region and asking for an emergency response. Hopefully they didn’t get lots of phone calls about credit insurance in the West Midlands too.
“However, with us now changing our website and not using LDPA any more we’ve now left the ground clear for the Learning Difficulties Professional Association. We also had a call related to the Latter Day Priests and Apostles which is a Unitarian church in the States – one person got us confused with them and asked about our schedules for services and celebrations.”
However, the name change isn’t all about confusion – Rolfe is confident that The Channel Partnership rebranding will help the company better serve clients going forward.
“When we asked our clients and staff to highlight what they think makes us different, a common theme started to emerge,” he said.
“They all believe that we offer a genuine partnership to our clients, rather than a hard sell approach. We hand-select insurance providers that are most suited to their specific requirements and specialise in advising our clients of the best, most suitable policies that are currently available. The market is continually changing, with new insurers offering new products and existing insurers changing their offerings and we always make sure we have all the up-to-date information for our clients. Our staff will even advise clients if there is a more suitable way to manage the cash they invest in their trade debtors than credit insurance, which builds a huge level of trust.
“We felt that the time had come to better portray our relationships with our customers and the way that we operate. The Channel Partnership was a clear winner with our team and we’re delighted with the new brand – it is already receiving so many compliments.”
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