Evaluating web comparison sites

With moneysupermarket.com and confused.com both claiming to offer the cheapest quotes for motor insurance based on research surveys, the poor consumer could be forgiven for wondering how one piece of research could end up favouring one site and another favouring the other.
Price comparison websites have rapidly become hugely important in the process of selecting insurance policies, but the assumption that they all work to a uniform set of criteria so that the consumer can genuinely compare like with like, is way off the mark.

A typical instance of this is where the aggregator sets the voluntary excess to automatically default to a large amount in order to offer reduced premiums. The consumer may not spot this and only find out at claim time. Similarly, if the consumer requires courtesy car cover or wishes to protect their no claims discount, the cost of this is not always shown or included in the initial quote. The consumer, therefore, will have to obtain this information directly from the insurer. Another complication is where the consumer cannot compare the actual cover levels between one policy and another to assess each one’s respective value for money.

Defaqto, the independent financial research company, evaluates motor price comparison sites for the overall quality of their operations, but not for premiums. To carry out this research it uses at thirty-three criteria relating to three aspects of the operation: The Quotation Process; The Quotation Results Process and Insurer Results. The findings provide a comprehensive and independent analysis of the quality of the sites.

Commenting on the situation, Mike Powell, Consultant – General Insurance said: “Our research so far has been into car insurance on price comparison sites. To do this we rate each site for the way it handles the thirty-three criteria we consider most relevant to the quotation process from a consumer point of view. What has emerged is that not one site covers all insurers and many have a fairly restricted pool of insurers to draw on.

“The same insurance requirement can even produce different premiums from the same insurer across different sites. The message is clear – make sure you know what you want in terms of cover levels and treat price as a secondary consideration.”