Mar

8

Compare the market - but who’s market?

Filed Under Insurance Aggregators |

Ronseal - does exactly what it says on the tin. Compare The Market - doesn’t.

George and I have been looking at the insurance aggregator market with interest recently as it’s a relatively new area with a few established names and plenty of people who want a piece of the action. The early entrants and creators of the market place appear to be Confused.com and Insurancewide.com. These two were soon to be followed by Moneysupermarket and more recently GoCompare. Each of these entities appears to do things slightly differently as the emphasis on their business differs. For example, Insurancewide.com seem to concentrate on portal service provision (hence their own very bland website). Confused.com seem to have focused on the B2C market (hence their messy integration with portal partners). And so on and so forth.

But there’s one aggregator which really takes the biscuit - Compare The Market. By name, you’d expect that by using their comparison tools you’d actually be able to compare the market. It is important to note that nobody actually compares the entire insurance market but with a name like Compare The Market, you’d expect them to be bloody close. Wouldn’t you?!

Has anyone used their comparison tools recently? Did you notice anything peculiar about the list of brands on the results page? Nope? Check the small print and you’ll soon notice that Compare The Market and about 95% of the brands on their comparison tool share the same four letters in common - BISL. So, Compare The Market does not in fact compare the market. Well, they do - it is simply a small market of Budget Insurance Services Limited trading brands which it compares. Its very own market. Seriously! You’ve got Yes Insurance, Debenhams, Budget, Post Office, Local Broker, Auto Trader Insurance, Marks & Spencer and Dial Direct, to name but a few.

Such a comparison tool is not an offensive thing in itself. Budget create many schemes and each trading brand has its own strength and rapport with the public. However, it is simply misleading to customers to give yourself that name when you don’t actually compare the market. Not only that, I was also horrified to read that Compare The Market gives customers quotes from over 300 leading brand insurers. Really? I’d like to see their list of 300 leading brand insurers. If anyone from Budget reads this, please feel free to post all 300 brand names into the comments box below.

I’m sure Budget will be trying to integrate more insurers onto their system but without being truely independent they will always struggle to get the big players who will really make it a market comparison. This is where GoCompare and Insurancewide.com may come into their own in the long run. Either way, here’s to hoping that Ziggy the robot does not become the next Crazy Frog!

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12 Comments so far

  1. Dan on March 9, 2007 4:34 am

    Great post again, i wonder if we’ll see compare the market rising up the rankings especially as it looks like Tamar are working with Budget Insurance.

  2. Ernest on March 9, 2007 5:42 am

    Always interesting to see how fast people climb up the rankings and what methods they use.

    Their success will probably depend on how much they’re willing to spend on Text Link Ads?!

  3. Dan on March 12, 2007 3:07 pm

    Haha yeah thats true, this site (http://www.bestdealinsurance.co.uk/) appeared at position 2 for “home insurance” recently, it appears to be using this system http://www.bucks4banners.net/ which is a new one on me. I can’t believe that Google has let this go on for so long, if they just looked at the topic of the sites the links were coming from we wouldn’t be having this problem.

  4. Ernest on March 14, 2007 6:23 pm

    Interesting you picked up on bestdealinsurance. I noticed them a few days ago when I did a search for life insurance - a very lucrative keyword to be top for.

    The first thing I noticed was the reliance on Endsleigh for product areas which aren’t served by their lead exchange system.

    The quicker they rise, the quicker they fall! Have you done any digging or filled in a Google spam report yet? Why not? Shame on you!

  5. Ernest on March 28, 2007 8:07 am

    Confused have since improved their integration with Orange - but only to the extent that they’ve done a slight creative overhaul of their site.

  6. Ernest on April 19, 2007 8:02 pm

    If anyone from Compare The Market stumbles across this post, please do something about your MSN rankings. This page is top for the term ‘compare the market’ - that’s a bit embarrassing isn’t it?

  7. Boozle on April 27, 2007 11:53 am

    Do you think aggregators are the future? I certainly don’t enjoy filling out a form more than once..
    Some ppl in the industry are against them, but who goes to their local butcher and baker, when you’ve got Tesco down the road?

  8. Ernest on April 27, 2007 5:19 pm

    Well Boozle, you’ve opened a can of worms there haven’t you?!!! You’re right though. Aggregators are not everyone’s cup of tea. For customers, they can be great, or they can be very misleading (usually without them knowing). Likewise, the insurers can get some good volumes (that’s the language of the industry) and the cleverer ones can also get some quality to suit their book of business if they use the system properly, instead of trying to play it.

    The majority of those against aggregators are probably those who feel they will drive the prices too low as it will become the sole competing factor. I can see their point but as their popularity grows, they can’t be ignored.

    My two pennies worth…aggregators can be good for all sides BUT you’ve got to pick the right ones.

    …there could be a whole post on this…I’ll stop now! However, we often get some of the GoCompare and MoneySupermarket guys on here. What do you guys think (if you happen to stumble across this post again)?

  9. Neil Hart on May 14, 2007 5:13 pm

    You guys definately know what you are talking about, great blog. For this very reason of aggregators saying they are comparing the market but not actually doing it we have set up the only site that looks at all the major players in the UK (www.insurewith.com). We are the only whole of market solution out there at the moment. We use pricing data that the insurance companies use themselves to set pricing models. Using data like this we can monitor anyone we like and give a complete view of the market. Down side is as we are not lnked into the insurance companies directly you do have to fill out the quotes yourself. In a recent independent test we gave the cheapest price 60% of the time over all the other comparison sites sites (mainly because we are the only comparison site to include UKI companies such as direct line)

  10. Ernest on May 14, 2007 7:23 pm

    @Neil

    Glad you like the blog. Saying that you compare the entire market does leave you open to someone coming along with the name of the one insurer you dont compare - just to pee on your parade!!

    I should also point out that, despite the fact that they dont tend to explain things very well, Insurancewide.com manage to compare the types of insurers you are talking about. Have you compared who you compare and who they compare? See who comes out on top.

  11. Creased on May 18, 2007 11:14 am

    I’ve just had a look at http://www.insurewith.com, and i think it is a nice idea and much quicker solution, but how can you tell that X insurer is best for me without knowing my postcode?

  12. Ernest on May 18, 2007 6:15 pm

    @Creased

    Neil has kindly agreed to do a Q&A with us. We’ll be examining their comparison model in that. There are good ways to profile without knowing the precise post code but to some extent, you’re right. Without specifics it can be difficult to make a detailed comparison.

    Speed is the key for customers here …and maybe other websites looking to integrate a simple tool.

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