Believed to be the first of its kind within the general insurance market, the voice app will be able to answer over 500 policy-based questions collated from the most common inquiries LV= receives.

Both car insurance customers and non-customers can use the voice app to ask general questions such as ‘what is the difference between voluntary and compulsory excess?’ and ‘how do I protect my no claims discount?’. They’ll just need to ask their smart speaker to “Open LV”.

However, it won’t deal with personal inquiries or those requiring an action such as wanting to change a payment date, or renewing or cancelling cover. Here, users are asked to call the insurer.

The voice app has been developed to help those less able to use a computer or telephone to make quick checks. It should also cut some of the 28,000+ questions LV= receives each month on policy documents.

Currently it’s only available on car insurance inquiries but LV= has plans to add other products to the app in future.

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LV= worked with specialist agency Rabbit and Pork to help build the functionality, which went live on Amazon Alexa and Google Home Assistant devices today.

Jon Mansley, LV= general insurance sales and marketing director, said: “At LV= GI we’re always trying to make things easier for our customers, so with nearly 13 million smart speakers sold in the UK in 2019 we thought a voice app would be helpful. With the launch of this new voice skill, customers can now find out details of their policy in a matter of seconds, simply by asking their smart device.”

John Campbell, Rabbit and Pork Managing Director, said: “We’re really excited to be working with LV= on this voice project to help make answering questions about insurance easier, quicker and more conversational.  We are delighted to launch on both the Google Assistant and Alexa platforms at the same time, which allows us to reach a wider audience.

“It’s important that companies such as LV= have a presence on voice-enabled devices, as we are seeing them become part of our daily lives. We look forward to building on this first version with more content and features in the future.”