Perhaps one of the most well-known names in the UK insurance market, Churchill Insurance offers a wide range of insurance policies that can protect you, your home, your car, your holiday and your pet! If you want to find out more about the insurer, from Churchill Insurance reviews and login information to more trivial facts about the famous Churchill mascot for your next pub quiz, you’re in the right place. Read Selectra’s complete guide to Churchill Insurance now to discover all there is to know.
Churchill Insurance: origins to present day
Churchill Insurance is a UK general insurance company based in London. Despite only being founded in 1989, today it is one of the UK’s most well known insurers: all Brits know the Churchill mascot, Winston the Bulldog!
The company began as solely a car insurer, being one of the first British companies to sell car insurance policies directly to customers, but it didn’t take long for the brand to grow. By 1990 it was also selling home insurance, and it soon expanded its range of policies to include travel, pet, breakdown and van cover. It even branched out from general insurance by starting to provide life insurance and life insurance for the over-50s.
Today, Churchill Insurance sells car insurance, home insurance, landlord insurance, travel insurance, pet insurance, van insurance, breakdown cover, life insurance, over 50s life insurance and public liability cover directly to customers, both online and over the phone. It also allows all of its policies to appear on price comparisons sites, letting customers easily compare their prices to other insurers.
Who owns Churchill Insurance?
Churchill Insurance is owned by Direct Line Insurance Group plc.
In 2003, Churchill Insurance was bought by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) and operated under their insurance department. However, after the government was forced to bail RBS out during the 2008 financial crash, RBS was required to sell some of its assets. One of these assets was its insurance arm, which led to the creation of Direct Line Insurance Group plc in 2012.
Direct Line Insurance Group plc now owns a number of UK insurance companies that you’ve probably heard of. These subsidiaries are:
- Churchill Insurance
- Direct Line
- Direct Line Business
- Green Flag
- Privilege
- NIG
Is Churchill the same as Direct Line?
While Churchill Insurance and Direct Line are owned by the same company - Direct Line Insurance Group plc - they are not the same company. They are separate subsidiaries of Direct Line Insurance Group plc, selling their own insurance policies with different benefits and prices.
Timeline of Churchill Insurance
- 1989 - Churchill Insurance is founded as a car insurer by Martin Long.
- 1990 - The insurer starts to offer home insurance alongside car insurance.
- 1994 - The British bulldog is used as the company’s mascot for the first time.
- 1995 - Churchill launches its website.
- 1996 - The nodding British bulldog, named Winston Churchill, is added to all its advertising campaigns.
- 1997 - It starts to offer pet and travel insurance.
- 1999 - Churchill Insurance buy the motorbike broker Devitt Insurance.
- 2000 - The company acquire the domain name Churchill.com.
- 2003 - RBS Group buys Churchill Insurance.
- 2012 - Direct Line Insurance Group plc is formed from the divestment of RBS’ insurance division. Churchill Insurance is now owned by Direct Line Insurance Group plc.
Winston Churchill the bulldogWinston Churchill the bulldog and his catchphrase are now synonymous with the Churchill brand. He has starred in many commercials with the likes of Melanie Sykes, Roy Walker, Martin Clunes and Dawn French, and has even tried his paw at pantomime!
Shares and finances
Being a subsidiary of Direct Line Insurance Group plc, Churchill Insurance’s annual finances are recorded as part of its parent company’s annual results. In 2018, the company made a £582.6 million profit before tax, which was roughly a £43 million increase from 2017.
Direct Line Insurance Group is registered on the London Stock Exchange. If you are interested in purchasing shares, you can find out the current price on the company’s official website under the tab ‘investors’. Here you can also calculate how much your current shares are worth and manage them through the shareholder centre.
Churchill Insurance policies
As mentioned earlier, Churchill Insurance offers a wide range of insurance products. From home and car insurance to travel and pet insurance, it can help you keep everyone and everything you love safe and sound. Let’s take a closer look at some of the policies it offers.
Home insurance
Churchill Insurance sells two home insurance policies:
- Churchill Home Insurance - this is its basic policy. Essential cover, such as buildings and contents insurance, is included as standard. Customers then have the option to add on cover that suits them e.g. accidental damage cover, insurance for personal possessions or home emergency cover. In other words, you can create a policy that is suited to your individual needs and only pay for the cover you want.
- Churchill Home Insurance Plus - as the name suggests, this is Churchill’s more comprehensive policy. All the optional extras you can choose to add on to the basic policy are included as standard, meaning it is a very complete home insurance policy.
As well as typical home insurance, Churchill Insurance also sells buy to let insurance for landlords and landlord boiler cover. Find out more about these and the home insurance policies offered in our complete guide to Churchill home insurance (coming soon).
Car insurance
Churchill Insurance offers both Third Party Fire and Theft car insurance, and Comprehensive car insurance. The comprehensive policy includes:
- an uninsured driver promise, meaning you remain covered if you're involved in an accident with an uninsured driver.
- a write-off replacement promise, meaning if your car is written off you can choose between having a replacement car, an upgrade to your old car or money instead.
- a guarantee for repairs to your car for five years.
Customers can also purchase van insurance through Churchill. Like car insurance, this comes as either the more basic Third Party Fire and Theft cover or Comprehensive insurance, the latter of which includes 24-hour accident recovery and windscreen repair or replacement. Churchill's van insurance is administered by Brightside Insurance Services.
Breakdown cover
Through Green Flag (another of Direct Line Insurance Group pls’s subsidiaries), Churchill Insurance also sell breakdown cover. This can be added onto a Churchill car insurance policy or bought separately. It comes in four different coverage levels:
- Churchill Breakdown Service - includes roadside assistance and help to complete your journey.
- Churchill Homeca ll Service - includes roadside assistance and help if something goes wrong with your vehicle at home.
- Churchill Home and Rescue Service - the most complete option for the UK, it includes roadside assistance, cover at home and a national recovery service.
- Churchill Advanced and Service - incorporates all the benefits of Churchill Home and Rescue Service in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
If you're interested in any of the motor insurance offered by Churchill Insurance (car, van or breakdown), head to Selectra’s Churchill car insurance guide (coming soon) to discover more about the policies and their prices.
Churchill Motorbike InsuranceAs of 18th July 2014, Churchill Insurance has not sold motorbike insurance. Before this time, it sold motorbike insurance arranged through Devitt Insurance Brokers.
Travel insurance
All travel insurance policies offered by Churchill Insurance can be taken out for individuals, couples, groups or as family travel insurance. The insurer has three coverage options:
- Annual travel insurance - this is designed to cover up to six people for an unlimited amount of trips during the year. Each holiday is limited to a maximum amount of days. Typically this limit is around 30 days, but the exact amount will be stated in the policy wording.
- Single trip travel insurance - this policy will cover you for the duration of one holiday. You can tailor it to your holiday and choose how many days you want the cover for, but it cannot exceed 90 consecutive days.
- Explorer travel insurance- this is Churchill’s long-stay travel insurance option and will cover you for single trips abroad that are longer than 90 days. It will provide you with travel insurance for up to 12 months in Europe and 18 months worldwide, an ideal amount of time if you are going backpacking, travelling on a gap year, or studying abroad for the year.
If you're heading on a more adventurous trip, for example hitting the ski slopes or getting married abroad, you can add additional cover onto any of the three policies mentioned above to ensure you're protected for specific activities. Churchill’s travel insurance add-ons include cover for winter sports, weddings and a golf holiday.
Want to know more about Churchill Insurance’s travel insurance policies? Our Churchill travel insurance guide (coming soon) has all the answers.
Pet insurance
In association with Legal and General, Churchill Insurance also sells pet insurance. It only offers one policy, but the range of optional extras available means that it can be adapted to fit your pet’s needs. Beware that it does not cover claims for any pre-existing conditions.
Who underwrites Churchill Insurance policies?
All general insurance policies sold by Churchill Insurance are underwritten by U K Insurance Limited. Established in 1974, U K Insurance Limited underwrites policies for a lot of well-known insurance providers.
Churchill Insurance login
Via the Churchill Insurance online account system, policyholders can view their insurance policies, get new quotes, save these quotes and view old quotes if needed. It sounds like a pretty handy system, so let’s see how you can log in to it with a step-by-step breakdown of the Churchill Insurance login process.
Go to the Churchill Insurance login page. To do this:
- Head to the Churchill Insurance website by typing Churchill Insurance into your search engine.
- Churchill Insurance - Car, Home,Life, Pet & Travel Cover should be the first result. Click this and you will be on the homepage.
- In the top right hand corner of the homepage, Log in is written in white. Click this and you will be taken to the login page.
Now you’re on the login page, type the email address you used to register your account into the box under Email Address.
Type the password associated with your account into the box under Password.
Check the box to confirm you are not a robot.
Click the green box at the bottom that reads Sign in.
If you have entered all your details correctly, you will now have successfully logged in to your online account.
Does Churchill Insurance have an app?
There is a Churchill Insurance app available for all customers who have a DriveSure car insurance policy. In fact, the DriveSure app is mandatory for all such customers as it keeps track of your driving score. You can find out more about how this app works and how to download it in our guide on Churchill car insurance.
Unfortunately, Churchill Insurance does not have an app through which insurance customers can log in and manage their policy on the go: you’ll just have to stick to the old-fashioned computer!
Churchill Insurance reviews
Now that we've looked at what policies Churchill Insurance sells and how you can manage your policy online, let’s see what current and past customers actually think of the company. Would they recommend it? Let’s take a look at some Churchill Insurance reviews to find out.
Churchill Insurance fares pretty well on review site Trustpilot, with a decent ranking of 4.3/5. Out of 1118 reviews, 63% rated the insurer as excellent. Praise here focuses on Churchill’s good prices and customer service, as well as the speedy arrival of all paperwork.
Great value for money, very simple to pay for the policy and the documents arrived in the post 48 hours later. Simon
In a bid to be more environmentally friendly, a lot of insurance providers have moved away from paper documents, now offering everything digitally. However, according to reviews, Churchill customers really like that the company has stuck with paper documents, even if it's not the best for the planet.
Similar compliments were paid on Reviews.co.uk, where Churchill Insurance is rated 3.78/5 and 71% of the 828 reviewers would recommend the provider to a friend.
I have found Churchill to be competent and good value for money. When I contacted staff, they have been polite and helpful… Anonymous customer
While we did spot a few negative reviews of Churchill Insurance on both Trustpilot and Reviews.co.uk, we could not pick up on a common theme for complaints as we have with other insurance companies. Negative experiences appear to be quite isolated for Churchill.
Complaints data
Here at Selectra, another way we like to analyse insurance providers is by taking a look at its complaints data. This can tell us how many complaints a provider receives, what these complaints are principally about, and how efficient the company is at resolving them.
Unfortunately, specific complaints data for Churchill Insurance is not available. Instead, Direct Line Insurance Group plc publishes complaints data for all of its insurance subsidiaries combined. While this can’t show us how many complaints Churchill receives, it’s not useless as it does give an indication into how fast they deal with complaints and what they're about.
From January to June 2019, Direct Line Insurance Group plc received 3.13 complaints for every 1,000 policies in force. Out of these, it resolved 65% within 3 working days, which is one of the highest percentages we have seen when compared to other providers. This suggests that Churchill (along with the other subsidiaries) are pretty efficient at dealing with complaints.
Need to contact Churchill Insurance? Whether it’s to make a claim, issue a complaint or you just have a general question, you can find all the numbers and contact methods you could possibly need on our Churchill Insurance contact page (coming soon).
Churchill Insurance promotional code & discounts
You can save money on a Churchill Insurance policy with numerous discounts and promotional codes. Websites such as vouchercloud.com have Churchill Insurance promotional codes that allow you to claim discounts on some of the insurer’s policies. These offers are continuously changing so it’s worth keeping a regular eye on such websites.
Churchill Insurance also helps reduce the price of its premiums by offering discounts for existing customers. For example, giving car insurance customers a 10% discount on an annual travel insurance policy, as well as a multi-car discount scheme that reduces your premium if you insure more than one car. If you already have a policy with Churchill, it’s worth checking what discounts you can get when looking for further insurance.
Selectra's verdict
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| Positive online reviews for both customer service and price. Offers a wide range of policies to suit individual needs. |
No access to indivdual complaints data to review complaints handling. |
Data and information correct as of October 2019.
All material on this page and the selectra.co.uk website is for information purposes only and does not constitute any form of financial advice. Selectra.co.uk is not responsible for any consequences that might arise from your use of the information provided.