car insurance renewal blocked ???

mutley66

Hi, I was  insured for my car with a company ‘a’ for last year at price of £1600. The renewal quote was £1900 even though I’ve had no claims! And no real explanation justifying the increase.   I’ve shopped about for alternative and an insurance broker has found company ‘b’ who have offered £1100 and it is parent company of company ‘a’ ! However, insurance broker said they need permission from company ‘a’ to allow their parent company ‘b’ to provide this competitive renewal that saves me £800. I’ve now been told company ‘a’ have refused to allow company ‘b’ (their parent company) to offer me this renewal!!! Is this allowed? As it’s seems completely illegal / unfair???
id really appreciated some advice please. 
regards

[Deleted User]

Yes, it's legal. They don't need to offer cover.

Sandtree

It is very common to have differential pricing such that different brands in the same group have substantially different pricing or even the same brand have different pricing if you approach them via the phone, broker, aggregator etc. 

Add on top of that many companies will have different policy T&Cs for different brands/channels etc and therefore that compounds the impact. Whilst we tend to all think of insurances being the same it isnt... less true for Motor than say Home but still there can be notable differences which impact pricing (eg if Driving Other Cars is included or not).

Finally you have new customer discount, for now at least a new customer in most insurers gets quoted less than a renewing customer.

I’ve certainly heard of sister brands having intragroup agreements that they won’t undercut/price match each other etc as thats just daft to do (and indeed resulted in a total restructure of one insurance company when the CEO of the Group company sat in on a call where an operator undercut its sister by £40). I’ve never heard of needing permissions etc and certainly not for a simple personal motor quote... could be different if its a 200,000 car fleet policy or such.

Ultimately put a complaint in with the broker, I am not sure why they’d have disclosed the premiums if there are significant queries to be resolved prior to them being able to sell the policy. Why are you not wanting to disclose the companies involved?