ONE Group, one of the UK’s leading independent travel insurance, claims and assistance providers, has announced the expansion of its business into the medically-impaired sector.  Iain Sykes, who has an extensive pedigree in this specialist market, has been appointed as Managing Director of the new subsidiary company which will launch goodtogoinsurance.com in June 2010.  He reports to ONE Group Chief Executive, Paul Byrne.

goodtogoinsurance.com will specialise in travel insurance for medically-impaired travellers with no age limits.  Iain has played an instrumental role in the development of the proposition, based on his 40 years insurance industry experience, the last decade having been focused on the medically impaired sector.

Iain has been a travel insurance specialist since 1972 at managerial and board level with various companies.  He has been responsible for many innovations, devising and developing, for example, the first travel delay cover during a time when frequent industrial action by air traffic controllers and baggage handlers caused widespread disruption. He has also created many successful brands including Extrasure and the original Abtasure, obtaining ABTA’s exclusive recommendation on both. In addition, over the years, as a broker, he handled the accounts of hundreds of tour operators and thousands of travel agents.

Since the late 1990’s, Iain has pioneered and championed the specialist area of elderly and/or medically impaired travellers, devising the first major dedicated brands for this sector which are the current market leaders.

Iain is working with Danny Palmer who has recently been appointed as Insurance Manager for goodtogoinsurance.com.  Danny has worked in the travel insurance industry since 1993, predominantly focusing on services for the Tour Operator/Travel Agent sector working for a number of major insurance brokers. For the last 3 years, he has worked for the Insurance Broker division of a major retail banking group, with responsibility for its profitable Personal Accident and Group Business Travel Insurance portfolio.

On his appointment, Iain Sykes said:  “I am delighted to be joining the ONE Group which has firmly established itself in the travel insurance sector for high quality customer service, combined with an innovative approach to insurance solutions.  The company’s insurewithease.com brand regularly achieves top ratings on a number of consumer insurance websites and its claims handling and assistance divisions are highly regarded within the industry

“This gives me a proven infrastructure to create and develop the goodtogoinsurance.com product.  Today, older people are physically fitter and mentally younger than ever.  As a result they are becoming more adventurous, with the time and money to travel abroad regularly. Similarly, people with severe medical conditions want to be able to enjoy their holidays secure in the knowledge that their pre-existing medical conditions are covered.

“goodtogoinsurance.com will address these opportunities, whether direct to the consumer in its own name or as a white-labelled solution offered through other insurance providers.”

Paul Byrne, CEO, the ONE Group, confirmed the significance of Iain’s appointment for this new development for the ONE Group:  “We have clearly established the insurewithease.com brand in the consumer marketplace and wanted to build on our knowledge and experience to offer other related travel insurance products.  The medically impaired sector only has a limited number of truly specialist players and, with Iain’s immense expertise and passion in this market we feel we have an incredibly strong proposition with goodtogoinsurance.com.”