Alliances between minor service providers and insurance companies are hardly unusual. What is unusual is the amount of attention some of our big daily media brothers have taken of a release from Sunshine Coast-based niche insurer Insurers Hotline announcing an alliance with a low-cost roadside assistance service called Motorists Transport Assistance (MTA).

Insurers Hotline, a subsidiary of South African-owned Australian Insurance Holdings, says MTA will offer policies to new and existing customers of its roadside assistance service.

MTA, which was formed in 2002 and which Sunrise Exchange News can’t find any information on, is not associated with any other motoring group – each of which already has its own branded personal lines insurance operation. And the new operation certainly won’t be called MTA Insurance, because the Motor Trades Association has already bagged that name.

Attempts to check with Insurers Hotline the significance of the media release – and just who MTA is and where it operates – were thwarted this morning by managers rushing to meetings.

Insurers Hotline’s sister company Budget Direct recently gained some free publicity when NRMA director Richard Talbot took part in a NSW campaign urging people to switch their car insurance to the Sunshine Coast-based insurer.

Mr Talbot is not involved in NRMA Insurance – he was an outspoken campaigner against the NRMA’s demutualisation in 2000 – and has now been excluded from board discussions that touch on matters which could expose him to commercial conflict.