Whitelabel and Multiproduct Propositions: Why it’s a win-win for brands and customers
- Stuart Brown
- 5 hours ago
- 8 min read
Over the past decade we have seen consolidation across many markets and industries, alongside the expansion of entirely new segments.
Trusted consumer brands with large, engaged customer bases are increasingly asking the same question: what else can we sell to the people who already buy from us?
To meet that demand, some brands choose to white label additional products. Others choose to build and run those products themselves. Both models are legitimate, and each is designed to achieve a different outcome.
Is white labelling worth it, and what is the recommended approach?
In insurance, white label is widely regarded as a highly successful proposition for customers and a genuine win-win commercially. It lets a brand expand quickly into a new segment without the investment, capital requirements and operational overheads of becoming a manufacturer.
Insurance is tightly regulated. Product disclosure, staff training, claims handling, pricing governance, design and distribution obligations, and constraints around marketing and advertising all add cost and risk. Partnering with a trusted insurer that already has those capabilities is a smart way to enter the market.
White label means what it says: take a product that is ready to sell from a manufacturer, apply your branding, and set your pricing and positioning within the agreed commercial framework. The underlying product, and the systems, billing and claims behind it, come from the insurance manufacturer.
Consumers are consolidating, not just shopping around
As life gets more complex, consumers are torn between shopping around across many independent brands and choosing a multi-product retailer that lets them bundle several services together, simplifying payments, reducing admin and removing friction from the decision.
Qantas is the clearest Australian example. Through its loyalty program it offers a suite of products well outside the airline and travel industry, all earning Qantas Points. The proposition is simple: what if Qantas could cover them all?
Look at the individual product lines and you see different partners involved in different capacities:
Qantas Health Insurance – issued by nib health funds limited, arranged by Qantas for commission.
Qantas Car and Home and Contents Insurance – issued by Auto & General Insurance Company Limited, with Qantas acting as an Authorised Representative of Auto & General Services.
Qantas Travel Insurance – issued by Zurich Australian Insurance Limited from 13 May 2026. It was previously underwritten by AIG Australia from July 2023, which is a useful reminder that white label arrangements do change hands.
Qantas Money Home Loans – credit provided by Bendigo and Adelaide Bank.
Qantas Life Insurance – promoted by Qantas as an Authorised Representative of TAL Direct, with policies issued by TAL Life. Note that this product has been closed to new business since June 2021 and now services existing policyholders only.
Other brands do the same in financial services. CommBank’s Essential Super is a good example: the product is distributed by Commonwealth Bank, while Colonial First State (Avanteos Investments Limited) is the trustee and issuer.
Following the sale of a majority stake to KKR in 2021, CBA now holds a significant minority interest in the CFS group rather than owning it outright, so what began as an in-house product now looks much more like a classic distribution partnership.
From the customer’s perspective it still does the job: their banking and their super sit in one app.
Why the partnerships work
White label partnerships work because the brand delivers real customer value and reach, while the partner delivers product, capital and operational expertise, with minimal overheads on the brand side. They are also a low-risk way to validate consumer demand before committing to building an entire department for what may only ever be a proof of concept.
Claims management is ultimately the most important part of insurance. Insurers have to deliver a claims experience that is second to none, because that is the moment that justifies the customer’s trust.
White labelling means the experts keep running the core insurance operations, including complex networks of vehicle repairers, home builders and contents replacement suppliers, while the retail brand focuses on what it does best: sales, marketing and customer relationships.
The models: how much control do you want?
There is no single way to structure these arrangements. Each option trades control against complexity.
Fully white label
The insurer handles all aspects of the product, including servicing, billing, renewals and claims. The brand provides guidelines and brand standards, and the insurer manages customer enquiries on its behalf, often with multi-brand skilled staff. This is an effective model in financial services.
In practice, if a customer calls about one product (say, a bank account) they speak with the main brand, but once the conversation turns to insurance the call is transferred to the insurer, who handles the enquiry under the brand. These arrangements are typically commission-based and may also be structured as a referral agreement.
Partially white label
The brand becomes an Authorised Representative of the insurance manufacturer. It recruits, trains and manages its own staff and oversees daily operations, but uses the manufacturer’s systems to store and facilitate customer transactions.
Here the customer can speak to one team member trained and authorised to handle all of the brand’s products and services, while the policy data and transaction history still reside with the insurer.
Referral and preferred provider
The lightest-touch option, and one worth naming because it is often mistaken for white label. The brand promotes a partner’s product under the partner’s name and receives a commission or referral fee.
Telstra does this for car and home insurance, promoting Huddle as an Authorised Representative of Open Insurance, and the customer journey ends on a Huddle-branded quote, not a Telstra one. The economics can be attractive, but the brand gives up ownership of the experience.
Brands doing this today
A snapshot of white label and partnership-based insurance propositions currently in market:
ING Health Insurance – underwritten by nib.
Priceline Health Insurance – issued by nib, marketed by Priceline (previously referred to as API Health, after parent company Australian Pharmaceutical Industries).
Kogan Health – policies issued by ahm (Medibank Private) and arranged by Kogan for commission.
Kogan Pet Insurance – in partnership with PetSure.
ahm car and home insurance – issued by Open Insurance on behalf of underwriter Hollard, with ahm as promoter and Authorised Representative.
ALDI Insurance – distributed and administered by Honey Insurance under binder, underwritten by RACQ Insurance (in which IAG acquired a 90% interest in 2025).
Everyday Insurance from Woolworths – car, home and landlord cover issued by Hollard, pet insurance by PetSure, travel by Pacific International Insurance and administered by nib Travel, with Woolworths Group acting as Authorised Representative.
nib in particular has built a substantial white label book. Qantas, ING, Priceline, AAMI, Apia, Suncorp, Real and Seniors all sit behind the one underwriter, which illustrates how scalable the model is for a manufacturer with the right capability.
Example: ALDI Insurance – distributed and administered by Honey Insurance under binder, underwritten by RACQ Insurance (in which IAG acquired a 90% interest in 2025). Honey also whitelabel other brands such as BOQ - with the same tech stack.
It is not just insurance
Kogan Energy operates through a partnership with Powershop Australia: Powershop is the licensed retailer supplying the energy and the billing systems, while Kogan owns the brand, the sign-up experience and the marketing. Qantas takes the same approach in lending, with Bendigo and Adelaide Bank providing the credit behind Qantas Money Home Loans.
It is often the brands you least expect that deliver real value through white label propositions, precisely because they have loyal, engaged customer bases and permission to extend into new verticals.
From white label to wholesale
As brands grow, they can renegotiate and transition a white label product into a wholesale arrangement. The distinction usually comes down to where the product, customer and transactional information resides.
Under a wholesale model the manufacturer does not hold the customer relationship or customer data, it supplies bulk services to the retail brand, which owns the front end end-to-end.
There can be many intermediaries in between, but white labelling remains the simplest and most scalable place to start.
Origin Energy is the textbook case. Origin’s broadband business originally ran on Aussie Broadband’s systems and infrastructure. In March 2024 Origin signed an exclusive six-year wholesale agreement with Superloop, and the migration of its roughly 130,000 existing broadband customers was completed in October 2024.
The relationship has scaled quickly since: Superloop confirmed it had passed 250,000 Origin subscribers in March 2026. The shift gave Origin ownership of customer support and billing while a wholesale partner continued to provide the network.
AGL initially took a different route to a similar destination, acquiring regional internet provider Southern Phone in 2020 to bring broadband capability in-house rather than continue to rent it, however has since sold the portfolio to Aussie Broadband. Under this model, AGL continues to market home internet and mobile bundles, while Aussie Broadband supplies the network infrastructure, operations, and customer support.
The pattern is consistent: partner to validate demand, then integrate once the volume justifies the investment.
Going it alone: when brands build their own
Setting up your own brand in a new product vertical is a hard feat. It introduces complexity, capital requirements and regulatory obligations, and it very often delays launch.
Tesla
Tesla is the interesting anomaly, and the detail matters. In the United States, Tesla underwrites its own motor insurance and has expanded to around a dozen states, adding Florida in late 2025.
But the business has not been a straight line. Its carriers reported a net underwriting loss in 2024 and it has faced regulatory scrutiny in California over claims handling. Running your own insurer is genuinely hard, even for a company with unmatched data on its own vehicles.
In Australia, Tesla does not underwrite at all. InsureMyTesla is issued by Zurich Australian Insurance Limited and sits under Zurich’s brand, with Tesla passing on the information and receiving a commission on referred policies. It is a preferred-provider arrangement rather than a true white label, a useful distinction when the objective is to own the customer experience.
Tesla’s Australian energy story shows the full arc. The Tesla Energy Plan launched with Energy Locals as Tesla’s authorised retailer, handling billing and customer enquiries: white label in everything but name. Tesla then obtained its own retail authorisation from the Australian Energy Regulator in May 2024 and a Victorian retail licence in April 2024, and the Energy Locals-based Tesla Energy Plan closed on 30 September 2025. As of today, the Tesla Energy Plan is no longer accepting new customers.
Whitelabelling gave Tesla the opportunity to validate customer demand and viabilty before making the business decision around how to pivot the offering.
Partner first, licence second.
Telstra
Telstra offers a cautionary version of the same story. In 2021 it secured energy retail licences and announced an ambition to become a top-five energy retailer. After limited customer trials, it paused the scaled launch in 2022 because of volatility and dislocation in the wholesale energy market, and no mass-market Telstra energy offer has followed.
Telstra’s device proposition tells you something too. Its current offer, Upgrade & Protect, is a $15 per month service covering screen replacements and device upgrades, deliberately structured as a service rather than a regulated insurance product, unlike the CGU-underwritten mobile insurance Telstra sold in earlier years.
And in car and home it refers customers to Huddle rather than badging a product of its own.
In each case, the question is the same: could a white label proposition have delivered the outcome faster, with less risk?
So, should you white label or not?
Building a new product vertical inside an existing business is difficult, and the regulatory load in financial services makes it harder again.
White labelling with a trusted provider lets brands get to market quickly, centralise operations and validate demand before committing capital, and it can be renegotiated into a wholesale or in-house model once the volume is there.
The brands that win are the ones that are honest about which model they actually want: full control of the experience, or speed and low overhead.
Both are valid.
Choosing the wrong one is expensive.
The Bridge International is proud to have worked with many of Australia’s leading insurance companies and has extensive expertise in white label and partnering propositions, and in developing brand and loyalty programs.
The Bridge International is a non-traditional management consulting team operating in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and North America. The team pride themselves on being practitioners: successful executives and subject matter experts who have worked in business rather than as career consultants.
For more on The Bridge International please visit: www.thebridgeinternational.com.au
For further information please contact us via info@thebridgeinternational.com.au
