Tesla gears up for in-house UK insurance launch

Tesla has submitted Companies House filings to set up a UK branch of its Malta-based European insurance company, Tesla Insurance Europe.

Companies House listing

Originally, the address for the UK branch was listed as a business unit at an industrial estate in West Drayton, London, but that has now changed to the Tesla UK headquarters and showroom on Chiswick Roundabout, just outside of London.

Company directors listed for the UK branch include Yaron Klein, president of Tesla Insurance Services, based in California, US.

According to Companies House, there are three directors listed based in Malta and one permanent representative for the UK. However a Linked In search of that UK representative appears to show he has left the business.

Full-stack in-house insurer

First, it looked as though any movement of an in-house insurer being introduced by the US firm went quiet after a while. However, it appears to be back on track after a job advert was published on Tesla’s website searching for a legal counsel for Tesla Insurance Europe to be based at the London headquarters.

In that advert, Tesla Insurance is described as a “full-stack in-house insurer” that is “rethinking the way” its customers experience insurance.

The role advertised includes building and leading the in-house legal function of the insurance company to guide through the legal and regulatory landscape of an insurer operating cross-border in Europe.

While several insurers provide cover for Tesla cars in the UK, at the moment Tesla only offers insurance in this country through a partnership with Direct Line Group.

US insurance growth

So far, according to its website, Tesla only offers in-house insurance to customers in five US states: Arizona, California, Illinois, Ohio and Texas. But the performance of the insurance arm of the business is performing better than officials expected.

In a fourth quarter and 2022 earnings call, chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn said of the insurance business: “We're currently at a $300m (£244.90m) annual premium run rate, as of the end of last year [2021]. We're growing 20% per quarter, so it's growing faster than the growth in our vehicle business."

Kirkhorn then revealed the US states where Tesla offers insurance, on average, 17% of Tesla customers are using a Tesla Insurance product.

He also said that number is increasing.

“That number [17%] continues to tick upwards, as we spend more time in markets. And we see most of the adoption occurring when folks take delivery of a new car, as they're setting up insurance for the first time as opposed to going back and switching when they already have insurance set up.

“So, there's an inherent stickiness in the insurance business.”

Motivation

On the call, Kirkhorn explained that the reason behind setting up an in-house insurance firm was to lower costs for customers, as Tesla had seen “high premiums of insurance from third party companies”.

We'll run this as a healthy business, but we want to make sure we keep our costs low and insurance stays affordable to our customers.

Zach Kirkhorn

He said: “The motivation for starting this business was to improve – and still is to improve – the total cost of ownership of our cars, given that we're seeing high premiums of insurance from third-party companies. That remains our priority here.

According to researchers Nimble Fins, Tesla vehicles are the most expensive electric vehicles to insure, with average premiums for the Model 3 vehicle starting at around £903.

Competitive rate

Elon Musk, CEO and product architect at Tesla, continued: “There are two really important benefits to Tesla Insurance that are worth mentioning: one of which is that just by Tesla operating insurance for our cars at a competitive rate, other car insurance companies offer better rates for Teslas.

"So it has a bigger effect than you think because it improves total cost -– or insurance costs – even when they don't use Tesla Insurance.

“Then it is also giving us a good feedback loop into minimising the cost of repair for all Teslas worldwide, because obviously we want to minimise the cost of repairing a Tesla if it's in a collision, and for Tesla Insurance.

"Previously, we didn't have good insight into that because the other insurance companies would cover the cost. And the costs – in some cases – were unreasonably high.”

Tesla declined to comment on the incoming in-house Tesla insurance company in the UK.