Insurers now have access to all your comparison site results?

oliverss

Hi all,
I called my car insurer to haggle down the renewal quote (following MSE advice page). I already had a cheaper quote using a comparison site (Compare The Market). The call centre operative said that they could see the results from my comparison efforts. 

This really shocked me. Isn’t accessing someone’s online activities against the law on data protection? Are comparison websites all doing this (giving all your results to every insurer)? Is it in the small print?

I’ve searched online but not found other reports of this. I can’t understand whether the operative is lying (and this is just part of their attempt to retain you) or if comparison sites are giving away our private information?

Thanks

DullGreyGuy

I think you are reading too much into what they mean... they will be able to see all the quotes they generated for you by you going onto the aggregators site. From vague memory the aggregator will tell them where they ranked in the quotes received (ie 1st, 5th, 40th) but wont say what the other quotes were or who they were from.

Obviously many companies operate under more than one brand in which case they'd see all the quotes from their group potentially.

Thats how aggregators work... you give them the details, they go to all the insurers/brokers/intermediaries on the panel and provide the details. The sellers then respond with a price and a link/reference to allow it to be bought. 

diystarter7

oliverss said:

Hi all,
I called my car insurer to haggle down the renewal quote (following MSE advice page). I already had a cheaper quote using a comparison site (Compare The Market). The call centre operative said that they could see the results from my comparison efforts. 

This really shocked me. Isn’t accessing someone’s online activities against the law on data protection? Are comparison websites all doing this (giving all your results to every insurer)? Is it in the small print?

I’ve searched online but not found other reports of this. I can’t understand whether the operative is lying (and this is just part of their attempt to retain you) or if comparison sites are giving away our private information?

Thanks

Hi
I'm a bit surprised but I guess its there in their T&C's

I loathe giving them my number so intially i give one to the old phone which is kept up as a backup and not been switched on for years.

If i like a quote, I phone direct the ins outfit

In the past for years I used to call Aviva back come the renewal and haggle down the price then LV but recent 2 years they would not budge and I used money back sites and actually saved close to 200 per insurance on the cars via cash back and special offers first year I think

Thnaks for the heads up, appreciated

born_again

Maybe operative was just stringing you along so they got a sale.

Or as this.

https://www.gocompare.com/about/privacy/

oliverss

Thanks. The branding point in particular is interesting. 

The operator went further. They told me that the better offer seemed to have concluded that my car was a cheaper sub-model based on the license plate. (E.g car x model y sub-model z.) That was what raised my concerns because that’s another level of detail. 

Could the operator have seen that based on the aggregator information? 

At the end of the call the operator then increased the price of the renewal. Which was a shock. I’m still not clear why because I didn’t tell them anything that wasn’t already on file. MSE doesn’t mention that if you’re haggling they may also increase the quote!

dwsjarcmcd

I'm surprised people are surprised by this.  If the aggregator didn't pass on customer details to an insurer or broker, they wouldn't be able to return a price, that's how it works.

They aggregators don't store all the risk or pricing details of each insurer, rather the customer's details are sent to the insurer via one of the external software houses to the insurer's systems, who return a price (or not) and the insurer can see each quote from any aggregator that the customer uses.

Also, regarding diystarter7's comment about disliking inputting telephone numbers (neither do I), that question is not mandatory any more, so can be ignored.

DullGreyGuy

oliverss said:

Thanks. The branding point in particular is interesting. 

The operator went further. They told me that the better offer seemed to have concluded that my car was a cheaper sub-model based on the license plate. (E.g car x model y sub-model z.) That was what raised my concerns because that’s another level of detail. 

Could the operator have seen that based on the aggregator information? 

At the end of the call the operator then increased the price of the renewal. Which was a shock. I’m still not clear why because I didn’t tell them anything that wasn’t already on file. MSE doesn’t mention that if you’re haggling they may also increase the quote!

Pre-Solvency II you had a lot more companies operating multiple insurance firms like DLG had Direct Line, Churchill, NIG and UK Insurance as insurers but also wrote business under additional own brands like Privilege (underwriten by Direct Line) and Natwest (underwriten by UK Insurance). Systems were aligned to the legal insurer so on the DL system you could see both the DL and Priv quotes/policies but not the Churchill or RBS

With costs of running an insurer having gone up notably thanks to Solvency II a lot of these were rationalised and so DLG still sells under a wider range of brands but its now all underwritten by UK Insurance. I've not kept track of what they've done with their policy admin systems but its fairly likely that has been rationalised too for their personal lines offering.


Obviously the half stories makes it difficult to understand whats gone on to be able to explain how its gone on. The DVLA have an API where you pass them a registration plate and they return the details they hold on the vehicle like its make, model and trim/mark, its engine size, fuel, colour etc. So a Peugeot 106 GL will be identified and priced separately from a Peugeot 106 GTI

Its been more than a few years since I've seen the aggregators APIs and so cant remember if they pass just the registration plate or also pass the vehicle details - I'd assume its the later given you can correct the information on some sites (though really you should be correcting it with the DVLA).

So yes, if you'd insured it as a Peugeot 106 GL when its really a Peugeot 106 GTI then they'd have seen the new trim level when you did the quotes on the aggregator and would then absolutely want to ensure its corrected on their records (you are somewhat lucky they've only increased the renewal and not considered it for the current policy). You need to make sure your V5 is correct and matches what you think the car is... though I understand its a pain to change it if the car was incorrectly registered

tilleythetoon

This is an old post , but it's the same thing I'm searching for.

Today I searched for car insurance on compare the market and found some cheaper. I then call hastings to cancel.  After some questions about what site I used and who the quote was from (sainsburys) the agent told me it was because the date I was searching for was for the 30th of the month not the 1st of September. 

At this point I asked how they knew what date I had searched to which the reply was she was doing a search with my details on site to see the results???

Ultimately I stuck with hastings as they lowered their renewal and excess