Domain Group to expand services with insurance offering
Domain Group is to expand into insurance, adding to its range of ancillary offerings as the property site prepares to separate from its parent company, Fairfax.
Domain CEO Antony Catalano, said: “Our new insurance offering will contribute to growing new transactional revenues for Domain through exposure to a total Australian market opportunity of more than $2 billion per annum in insurance commissions.”
Domain Insure will operate as a joint venture with insurance specialist Envest, with Domain holding a 70% stake.
The news comes just months after the group moved into the mortgage broking market with Domain Loan Finder, a step towards its goal of becoming an end-to-end solution for consumers, who can use Domain to consume real estate news, search for properties and begin the home loan process.
In addition to Domain Insure and Domain Loan Finder, Domain’s current portfolio of offerings include utilities connections business Compare & Connect, home improvement and maintenance business Oneflare and check-in management system Homepass.
Domain has also hinted at widening its content ambitions, with Catalano telling an audience of agency partners just last week: “[Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood] wanted this category to be more than a real estate category. He wanted it to be a lifestyle brand and to associate with all of the transactions that occur in the real estate space.”
Speaking at the same event, Johnny Styles, strategic director at Domain Media added: “Travel, auto, retail, entertainment are all high on the list of people who are looking to buy a home. And we have deep category understanding and a deep sense of where and when to engage with an audience.”
I wonder when the market will get sick of these Fairfax thought bubbles? If we go back in time, there have been expensive failed “innovations” by this company’s string of “leaders” – all of which produced nothing more than a small pile of ash where the cash used to be.
Fairfax was a strong business, with huge cash flows that could fund a few experiments. But it’s now a shell and the purportedly healthy Domain bit is its main hope. Like many others I’d like to know what TPG ran away from. I suspect at its heart the problem is that Domain relies on newspapers and with Hywood’s help they are nearly dead. The Fairfax saga is rolling into one of those Johnny Depp pirate phases – a lot of ghosts and a few desperados chasing a last bit of gold.