Car insurance -big difference in quotes changing Surname

peter999

Any idea why there is a big difference in online car insurance quotes simply by changing Surname ?

My Surname is foreign, if I use it in the online quotes with confused.com, RAC Insurance are quoting £90 higher than if I use an English surname !


If I am looking to change car insurance, I normally get quotes with confused.com to get idea of renewal quotes to negotiate with my current insurance provider.

I noticed simply changing to the foreign Surname changed some of the quotes, one quote with RAC Insurance I was interested in, increased nearly £90.

I couldn't understand it, so started to look more closely, thinking some other quote details must be the issue. Then found simply changing Surname changed the RAC Insurance quote a lot.


For few other companies their prices decreased slightly using foreign surname.

Haven't noticed this before, I am English born & bred.
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Smithers37

It's very likely due to third party data enrichment. Any financial institution will use various tools to help them assess whether they wish to take someone on based on the information available. For example, one insurer may not find enough information and will not quote where as another will quote but at a premium.

Seems odd however that when you're using your real name the prices are higher. Do you have any history with experian or any other CRA perhaps?

eddddy

Have you used any of these insurers before? If so, they may be removing a 'new customer discount' when you give your real name.

Or...

Did you change the name back afterwards to see if the quote went down again? In the past, I've noticed that sites sometimes ramp up premiums if you 'play' with the details. Perhaps because they suspect you are contemplating fraud.

peter999

Smithers37 wrote: »

It's very likely due to third party data enrichment. Any financial institution will use various tools to help them assess whether they wish to take someone on based on the information available. For example, one insurer may not find enough information and will not quote where as another will quote but at a premium.

Seems odd however that when you're using your real name the prices are higher. Do you have any history with experian or any other CRA perhaps?

I can check this a bit further if I get quotes for next door address using English surname & my foreign surname.

Just did it and I'm getting same thing happen with RAC Insurance quoting about £90 more for my foreign surname.

Quotes for other companies are same or about the same.

[Deleted User]

You need to use a fake first name fake address. Simply putting in next door's address won't help, they will still know it is you. I have a foreign surname as well and don't have this problem, so it is almost certainly something about you personally.

peter999

DELETED USER wrote:

You need to use a fake first name fake address. Simply putting in next door's address won't help, they will still know it is you. I have a foreign surname as well and don't have this problem, so it is almost certainly something about you personally.

You can't link same names to different addresses, that would be wrong.

You could have 2 John Smiths living next door to each other or close by, similiarly 2 foreign names.

They have to go on details given.

InsideInsurance

peter999 wrote: »

I can check this a bit further if I get quotes for next door address using English surname & my foreign surname.

Just did it and I'm getting same thing happen with RAC Insurance quoting about £90 more for my foreign surname.

Quotes for other companies are same or about the same.

Insurers want to know how price sensitive their customers are which enables them to predict the impact of future pricing changes. The way that many of them do this is to randomly assign a small percentage of customers a different price to the standard. So 90% of people get the normal price, 5% get a 20% discount and 5% get a 20% loading is what one client did.

Pricing can then track the conversion rate for each and calculate the customer elasticity. Thus when the Commercial Director says they want to increase prices by 10% they can tell him that he'll lose 8% of business and so will be better off.

Now the problem is on how do you randomly assign people. Reality is that whilst random it has to be repeatable because of marketing messages like 10% discount for buying online. If it was purely random this wouldnt be true if you were randomly placed in the 5% that get the 20% discount when quoting on the phone and then not in this group when doing an online quote.

To get round this they have to use some part of your quote as the seed of the random allocation method. In theory surname of the insured could well be the seed, other clients have used things like postcode.

Never worked for RAC so dont know their set up. You could test it by doing another "foreign" surname and see how their price compares.

[Deleted User]

peter999 wrote: »

You can't link same names to different addresses, that would be wrong.

You could have 2 John Smiths living next door to each other or close by, similiarly 2 foreign names.

They have to go on details given.

Let me explain to you how the internet works. Each broadband connection has this thing called an IP address. Every web browser accepts these things called cookies. Without going into the details they both allow the insurers to track you.

The insurers are not dumb. They will notice when the same IP address with the same cookie does a quote for the same car with the same NCB and claims details and number of named drivers and so forth from two adjacent addresses within minutes of each other.