Home Insurance comparison sites: Aggregation or aggravation?
Defaqto's has published its sixth annual home insurance report: "UK Home Insurance - Aggregation or aggravation".The report comments on the problems that the consumer is faced with when purchasing their home insurance through aggregator sites.
For the report, Defaqto carried out a detailed analysis of the services offered by 28 aggregator sites including Comparethemarket, Confused.com GoCompare, Moneysupermarket and Tesco Compare.
Key findings include:
no aggregator site offers customers ‘whole of market' coverage, despite what the aggregators imply from their marketing
few aggregator sites allow customers to clearly compare policies on anything other than price
aggregators make a number of assumptions about underwriting factors in order to obtain quotations from insurers and intermediaries which could leave customers uninsured if they do not check their quotation very carefully
some aggregator sites do not provide consumers with the ability to cover all of their insurance needs
Defaqto's General Insurance Consultant, Mike Powell says: "The home insurance aggregation market is no where near as developed as the car insurance market. For the consumer, it appears that there are a number of sites available, but our research into this market has left us with the opinion that there are only 5 true aggregator sites. The remainder predominately provide quotations from intermediary panels, which could easily be obtained from a local broker".
"Some of the so called aggregator sites do not allow the consumer to include cover for their possessions outside of the home" adds Powell, "This is a major area that consumers may need cover, and not being provided with the option to include this cover could be seen as an example of poor practice by the FSA".
Powell continues, "Consumers who choose to use these price comparison sites should be careful to check exactly what they are being covered for and in particular, they should pay close attention to the excess levels".