One Call is betting that British drivers want to skip the brokers and the comparison sites altogether, with the Doncaster-based group launching Zen Insurance, a digital-first direct-to-consumer brand.
Built on Verisk Ignite's policy management platform and Applied Systems Europe's Applied Rating Hub, it enters a personal lines market under acute margin and distribution strain.
Zen opens with car cover and is configured to extend into other vehicle classes and home insurance. Customers transact entirely through online portals, live chat and self-service tools, with no intermediated layer in between.
The timing is telling. UK personal lines gross written premium fell 1% to £42.82 billion in 2025, with private motor contracting 7.6%, GlobalData has reported.
Mordor Intelligence sizes the UK motor market at US$24.42 billion this year, growing to US$29.93 billion by 2030, while home insurance is forecast to climb from US$7.16 billion to US$8.15 billion by 2031.
Profitability is the harder story. EY analysis, cited by Mordor Intelligence, projects the UK motor combined ratio will deteriorate to 101.6% in 2025, a sharp reversal from a profitable 93% the year before.
At the same time, Consumer Intelligence has flagged falling traffic to price comparison websites, even as those sites still command 55.3% of motor premium, according to Mordor. Direct digital channels, by contrast, are growing at a 7.38% compound annual rate.
One Call is not a newcomer. Founded in South Yorkshire by John Radford in 1995, the group marked its 30th anniversary last year and now employs more than 1,000 people across car, home, travel, van and commercial lines.
Chief executive Nik Springthorpe used the anniversary to point towards what he called "the next chapter of innovation and service excellence." Zen is that chapter made concrete: a clean-sheet digital brand, separate from the One Call name, designed for customers who never want to speak to anyone.
Verisk Ignite, a cloud-based system, runs the policy lifecycle from quote and bind through renewals, mid-term adjustments and billing. Applied Rating Hub plugs Zen into more than 30 personal lines insurers and managing general agents, covering over 100 products through full-cycle electronic data interchange.
Josh Barnsdale, chief technology officer at One Call, said the no-touch model allows cost savings to flow into Zen's pricing.
Verisk Ignite managing director Nick Haldane said a fully digital proposition demands more than a polished front end, while Applied Systems' Matt Wellman said the single-connection model gives Zen a head start on speed to market.
