Marshmallow Insurance soft credit search

bluenose25

Who are they and do they own any other companies? I had an email from Credit Karma to say somebody had run a soft credit search, when I looked it was Marshmallow Insurance. I haven't personally owned a car for 3 years. I am a named driver on my wifes car and she renewed yesterday with Sheila's Wheels direct after having comparing others via GoCompare. Surely I shouldn't be credit checked as a named driver, especially when there's no policy taken out? Seems odd to me.

Sandtree

So you'd guess that they appear on GoCompare's list of intermediaries and if you look at GoCompare's process you have to agree to their T&Cs and Privacy Policy before they give any quotes the later of which states that soft search credit checks may be done.

bluenose25

Even though I'm just a named driver rather than the prospective policy holder?

bluenose25

Having checked GoCompare, the only details provided for me on the quote request is my name. No DoB or anything else. Seems off that I would then receive a soft credit check off this information, how could they be sure they are checking the right person? My name is hardly unique.

Sandtree

bluenose25 said:

Even though I'm just a named driver rather than the prospective policy holder?

You'd need to ask Marshmallow to see why they do it but there are three options:

1) Existence checking - they want to make sure you actually exist, its not unknown for high risk drivers to add a fictitious safe named driver to reduce premiums if they dont have a real parent or partner to add

2) Claims impact - more than one insurer does consider financial position of all those to be covered by the policy with a loading applied to those seen as in financial distress... mass market insurance will say its just driven by stats but the logic may be a higher propensity to commit claims fraud or "liquidate" assets via the insurance

3) Financial link - if the two of you are financially linked the check could be nothing to do with your being a Named Driver but simply you show as financially linked to her and so they are just following the string in checking her for item 2 above.

CaiparinhaAllstars

I have just had exactly the same warning from Karma. I haven't used any comparison sites recently.

dunstonh

CaiparinhaAllstars said:

I have just had exactly the same warning from Karma. I haven't used any comparison sites recently.

key word "recently".    If you have used one in the past then providers will often re-run them.