Blog: Our Exporting Journey-Coverdrone

The blog below is written by Jess Crabtree, Marketing Executive, Coverdrone, she shares the Crewe firm’s export journey.

Coverdrone provides specialist drone insurance to commercial and recreational drone operators. Based in Crewe, we were the first specialist insurer in the drone market and are currently the largest. Over the past 14 years we have continuously developed the product we offer whilst reacting to both customer feedback and legislation changes.  By doing this we ensure that the product meets the client’s needs and is competitively priced. Drone operators must comply with the EC785/2004 rules and regulations within the UK and EU, therefore, specialist drone insurance is vital to make sure that you are fully compliant.

It has always been Coverdrone’s goal to “go global” to meet drone operator’s insurance needs. We include a global FlySafe app and have, to date, built our client base in the UK and Europe, partnering with in-country insurance agents to sell to operators in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Brexit was one of the biggest challenges Coverdrone has ever faced. Our regulatory passporting was no longer valid so, to continue selling to EU customers, we needed to be regulated and established in an EU member state. The Netherlands was our largest market at the time, with a reputable client base and the most connections. We therefore selected this country for our European office and embarked on a journey to incorporate a company and gain our licence from the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). A compliance consultant, accountant and insurers contributed to helping us with this uniquely challenging process which took around 15 months to complete. Learning from this experience of opening Coverdrone EU B.V. we now intend to follow in our own footsteps and create a local presence wherever necessary which will also mean we are less reliant on third parties.

Another challenge we faced whilst growing our business in Europe was the realisation that, by only having our policy documents available in the English language, a potential customer might need to translate this into their own language which, depending on accuracy, could deter them from selecting a policy with us. In 2022 we will therefore be launching our policies in 14 languages! This will not only help us to communicate our offer more easily and efficiently to a greater number of clients but also, due to clear and accurate translations, the client experience is improved as is the conversion rate to a purchase.

The next countries in our sights include Turkey, Israel, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the USA. Our goal is to meet as many drone operators needs all over the world!

Find out more about exporting support here

Find out more about Coverdrone here