Admiral Group

Admiral launched in 1993 with one brand and 57 members of staff. The Group offers a range of insurance as well as finance from a number of different brands and has nearly 10,000 members of staff. Admiral operate mainly in the UK, but has operations in Spain, Italy, France, the US and Mexico, and has over five million customers worldwide.

Admiral have also partnered with a number of other companies to build on their own innovation. This includes working with Cardiff University on a Big Data Analytics and Knowledge Transfer projects to help Admiral capture and analyse data more effectively. They also partnered with Vodafone in 2017 who provided telematics services that underpinned Admiral's blackbox product 'LittleBox'.

In April 2019 Admiral Group announced it was to form a Spanish joint venture with Oakley Capital and Mapfre SA. In January 2020 it was revealed that the deal had fallen through.

In October 2019 Admiral announced it was to group its comparison websites and platforms (including Confused, Rastreator and Le Lynx), as well as Admiral Technologies in India, under its new subsidiary, Penguin Portals. Elena Betés was appointed CEO of Penguin Portals.

During the global Covid-19 pandemic, Admiral was the first UK insurance provider to provide compensation to its auto customers. The insurer sated it would return £110m to its policy holders, with the owners of the 4.4m cars and vans receiving an automatic £25 refund for each vehicle covered.

In 2020 Admiral launched Admiral Pioneer, with the objective of seeding, launching, and scaling new businesses in areas of increasing societal importance. Its key focuses are Mobility, Future of Work and Live to 101.

In January 2021 Admiral agreed to sell its subsidiary Penguin Portals, which includes Confused, as well as its technology operation for around £500m to rival ZPG (owner of Uswitch).

In March 2021 Becky Downing, Founder of Buzz Group, announced she had left her CEO role at Buzz and was joining Admiral Group as Venture Director at Admiral Pioneer.

That same month, motor insurance marketplace Honcho announced it had partnered with Admiral Group to offer Admiral MultiCar insurance on its platform.

In May 2021 Admiral Group completed the sale of Penguin Portals for £508m. Comparison sites Confused, Rastreator, LeLynx, as well as Admiral Technologies and its 50% share of Preminen have been acquired by ZPG Comparison Holdings UK. Whilst most of the proceeds will be returned to shareholders, some will be put towards new business development over the next few years.

In July 2022 Ondo teamed up with Admiral to further scale in the UK, providing 20K of Admiral's customers with a free Leakbot.

In March 2023 Admiral extended its partnership with Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), the world’s largest telematics service provider, to launch LittleBox Pod, a new telematics offering that can lower insurance prices for drivers of all ages. The Pod works in unison with the Admiral app to give drivers feedback on each trip and provides a score that indicates their driving safety. Drivers can follow their progress in the app and improve their score, which can reduce insurance premiums.

Later in June of the same year Admiral Group purchased French property insurtech, Luko for an undisclosed sum. Luko had established itself in the online home insurance market and by 2022, 25% of home insurance policies sold online in France were via Luko. It has been working to define the optimal strategy to continue growing and achieve scale and profitability and chose Admiral as its best partner going forward. Admiral said the acquisition would accelerate its growth in France, where its existing French business, L'olivier Assurance, already sells motor and home insurance.