E-commerce: Powerplace completes '3 As' with Axa addition

Chief executive, Matthew Reed, confirmed that Axa had committed to join the panel but explained there had been a delay due to its desire to launch via the imarket portal.

Talking about further additions to the insurer panel, Mr Reed said that he was looking to add more specialist insurers: "I would like to be able to say to brokers that we have the perfect panel and we are looking to double the size of our property owners' panel by middle of next year. We need to look at the insurers that are offering something different.

"We are building our own products on the platform but, going forward, we will be connecting with other people's platforms and imarket is one of them. Things [in this sector] move on very, very quickly," he added.

At the beginning of November Aviva announced that it would launch on Powerplace with its property owners' policy in early 2011 while Allianz joined with its commercial small to medium-sized enterprise offering earlier this year.

Explaining why it had taken so long for the three to come on board, Mr Reed said: "Insurers have been hedging their bets but I don't think we have reached the tipping point of e-commerce. We are able to prove you get more business if you are on a panel - people don't want monopolies.

"There is a bit of aggregator spectre looming over brokers and it is concentrating their minds about how to do business more efficiently."

He added that Powerplace was currently signing up two brokers a day and although the company had forecast a membership of 1,000 brokers by end of 2011, he expected to exceed that figure.

To date, Powerplace has signed up 600 brokers and Mr Reed said that it was very much the case of the "more the merrier".