Car insurance app firm Honcho heads to Durham in growth bid

Honcho, the company behind a new app designed to slash car insurance costs is moving to Durham and creating new jobs following investment from a new fund.

Honcho’s app, which claims to be the UK’s first “reverse auction” market-place for car insurance, in a bid to reduce costs for motorists and decrease dependence on price comparison websites.

The app allows insurers to bid for consumers’ business, competing with each other to offer the best value package in real time. Insurers pay honcho £1 for the right to bid, enabling them to reduce premiums for consumers.

Honcho turned to crowdfunding platform CrowdCube in November 2017 aiming to raise £650,000, and closed the investment window nine days with a final amount of £850,000 from 713 CrowdCube investors.

That amount included investment of £150,000 from the Finance Durham Fund, managed by Maven Capital Partners, and the funds will be used to complete the final build of the software and launch the product later in 2018, creating three new jobs based in Durham.

Now headquartered in Salvus House, Business Durham’s flagship office space at Aykley Heads, honcho adds to Durham’s existing network of ambitious, high-growth tech companies.

The investment in honcho is the fifth deal from the £20m fund established with funding from Durham County Council and overseen by Business Durham, the economic development organisation for County Durham .

The fund is managed by Maven Capital Partner, which is supporting the growth of high potential businesses located in, or looking to relocate to the county.

Alex Marsh, investment manager at Maven, said: “honcho is a hugely exciting new business and we are delighted to support its plans to launch such an innovative app for motorists that empowers the consumer and ultimately reduces the cost of insurance.

“The team has identified a clear gap in the market and the overwhelming response from the crowd demonstrates that there’s a real appetite for the technology they’ve developed.”

Gavin Sewell, CEO of honcho said “We are very much looking forward to working with Maven, Business Durham and our other key partners in the North of the country to launch our reverse-auction marketplace for financial services products. honcho will be a truly disruptive force in the marketplace; putting consumers’ first, encouraging competition and transparency, and saving them time and money.”