Admiral car quote - difference via Confused and MSE for same details

SamDude

I ran a car insurance quote (via TCB) at Confused.com (£30 cashback via TCB). The top price was Admiral at around £505.
I ran the same details with Admiral (via the MSE link as there is a £50 Amazon voucher). The quote came back at £610.

Is this a thing?
I was hoping it was the same or less (or at least close) via the MSE link taking into account the £50 Amazon voucher and £30 TCB cashback. :shocked:

SonOf

Different distribution channels have different prices. Just like any retail product.

MovingForwards

I always found different prices for the same insurer across the comparison sites, it is normal.

Aretnap

Kellogg's cornflakes have a different price in Asda and Waitrose. Same product, different retail channel, different target market, different price. Not unlike insurance.

eddddy

As well as different target markets, there are business issues as well.

• Admiral pay MSE a referral fee
• Normally insurers would pay Confused.com a referral fee - but Confused.com is owned by Admiral, so they might be making more 'margin' selling through their own comparison site, even though they quote a lower premium price

bobbiz22

MSE referral fees (or even cashback referral links) won't affect your insurance costs. Your insurance is underwritten based on your details & not by what URL you visited from as the quote process will be exactly the same no matter where you come from.

Looks like confused currently have a price cut/discount with Admiral according to this - https://www.confused.com/special-offers along with many other insurers on their panel, which means you'll find all those insurers should be cheaper than on the other comparison sites today (or by going direct) - I always find cheaper by using a comparison site than going direct, that's just the way it is I believe.

Next month, you might see a cheaper Admiral quote on moneysupermarket or Gocompare etc...compared to a quote on confused. Just depends on which one, if any, puts a special offer in with them. This would be same for other insurers on the comparison sites, someone might have a discount one month, the others won't. Budget Insurance owns Compare the market...But that doesn't mean you'll always see the cheapest Budget insurance price on their site every month...

eddddy

bobbiz22 wrote: »

MSE referral fees (or even cashback referral links) won't affect your insurance costs. Your insurance is underwritten based on your details & not by what URL you visited from as the quote process will be exactly the same no matter where you come from.

No - that's not correct. Insurers' pricing is much more sophisticated than that.

Obviously risk level is the starting point, but alongside referral fees etc, another significant factor is "how much do we think the customer is willing to pay?".

So Admiral may think that MSE users are prepared to pay higher premiums than Confused.com users - so they adjust their quotes accordingly.

The FCAs interim report "General insurance pricing practices" confirms this:

4 How firms set prices and treat their customers

4.11 Firms set prices to maximise growth or profitability, taking account of a consumer’s willingness to pay, likelihood to buy/renew or buy add-ons. The information used in the model includes customer characteristics gained both from information provided by the customer and wider externally available information. Firms also take account of other factors such as the distribution channel, or product purchased, to estimate how likely a customer will be to buy and renew at different price levels over time.

Link: https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/market-studies/ms18-1-2-interim-report.pdf

Also, a newspaper article that confirms that you get different insurance quotes, depending on the referring website:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/car-insurance-comparison-sites-charge-more-same-policy-channel-4-investigation-gocompare-a8073721.html

bobbiz22

eddddy wrote: »

Also, a newspaper article that confirms that you get different insurance quotes, depending on the referring website:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/car-insurance-comparison-sites-charge-more-same-policy-channel-4-investigation-gocompare-a8073721.html

Yes, that confirms what I said about pricing depending on which comparison has a special offer in with an insurer that month, which is why you can get different prices across all 4. The same insurer isn't going to have the same rate/discount offer on all 4 at the same time. All the comparison sites are competing against each other, so they'll want to put discounts in with certain providers to draw customers into their site. MSM currently have an advert running which says they have 10% off Tesco polices this month, so you should see a cheaper Tesco policy on there than you would on GoCo etc... I check all 4 sites regardless, because their discounts vary every month. But I always find one of them will come out cheaper than going direct to insurer for me anyway. :beer: - Just had my hastings renewal and they want an extra £100 this year, so I will be shopping around to find a cheaper price, I'm almost at the "21 day" before renewal peak, so it'll be interesting to see how that works for me. :money: