“An advert on the back of a London bus invites drivers to apply for some car insurance over my mobile. Visit Swiftcover.mobi or text ‘Swift’ to 80231 (which replies quickly with the URL) for a quote in 60 seconds or less.

So we tried it… not while driving as that would be illegal, if not a little daft.
On the homepage Swift’s hen invites us to get a quote, offering a money-back guarantee if cheaper insurance is found elsewhere within 14 days of the start of the policy.

A form on the next page asks for name, date of birth, occupation (choice of 24), postcode, registration and years of no claims discount. Then submit.
Not quite 60 seconds, but fairly swiftly page three concludes: “We can offer you car insurance for as low as…

We are invited to submit our email address. The fourth and final page tells us the quote has been emailed.
Simple and effective, so far…

Awaiting the email, we check the site for mobile readiness on ready.mobi. Swiftcover.mobi receives a respectable 4 out 5.

Three hours later the promised email hasn’t arrived. This gives plenty of time to double-check the insurance quote with online broker, Moneysupermarket.com.

Here the form filling is much more tedious than the Swiftcover.mobi. But it’s worth it, delivering a choice of quotes almost a third less. Even Swift is somewhat cheaper through the brokerage than on the mobile.

So how successful has the campaign been, after the initial three months? Unfortunately for the rest of us, the Swift hen is playing its cards close to its feathered chest: “The campaign has exceeded targets to date however due to commercial sensitivities; we are unable to make stats public at this time.”