Patrick Ndoro, director of Kent-based 365 Car Club, explains why the business should win the innovation in funding category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition.
In 2014, our claims experience showed that the insurance company had doubled our premium to £5,500 per vehicle. With a fleet of 12 at the time, we did not have £66,000 (excluding insurance premium tax) to spare. Plus, we had just spent £18,000 on opening our office which had previously been a cafe.
Our premium had expired in early April and we still had to maintain the running of the office, pay wages and keep up with bills that had accumulated since acquiring the premises. I did some research on the BVRLA website and found out that we could still legally hire to customers who provide their own insurance document, provided they sign an indemnity form.
We did some research into short term insurance companies that would covers hired vehicles. We quoted each member a price from the insurance site before giving them the total price of the car. From previously paying equivalent to £12 per day on insurance, we were charging customers on average £30-£60 per day just to cover expenses.
We managed to survive the hard times and secure a contract with URG, a company that hires cars to smaller hire companies like ourselves. This meant that we could sell some of the expensive cars on our fleet to raise the finances. This gave us the opportunity to get better, newer cars for less money, as well as keeping our small cars, allowing the business to free-up the cashflow.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
