Why do all major price comparison sites all use the same results provider?

Dave_KS

Whilst researching same insurance quotes from all the major online comparison sites all my results came back via a  company called "Simply Business". I had a follow up call from their rep and out of curiosity i asked a. why does it all come back to one company and where is the market competitiveness price wise in that that.  It seems that they claim to be "The largest clearing house with all the records needed for all the comparisons sites"  For fairness  I felt that something did not feel right so i actually stood by my present insurer who was actually much cheaper on like for like and who did not appear in any comparison listings.  

SiliconChip

What sort of insurance were you looking for?

MyRealNameToo

Dave_KS said:

Whilst researching same insurance quotes from all the major online comparison sites all my results came back via a  company called "Simply Business". I had a follow up call from their rep and out of curiosity i asked a. why does it all come back to one company and where is the market competitiveness price wise in that that.  It seems that they claim to be "The largest clearing house with all the records needed for all the comparisons sites"  For fairness  I felt that something did not feel right so i actually stood by my present insurer who was actually much cheaper on like for like and who did not appear in any comparison listings.  

In short... because Simply Business nailed it. 

So... a traditional broker kind of is like an aggregator, they get quotes from lots of different companies with each firm quoting based on their own terms. Traditionally a broker would be advisory so they would look through the quotes and tell you which they thought would be best value for you. 

Aggregators came up with the idea of doing similar but with two differences, firstly they dont do the sale themselves, they only show you the prices let you choose which and then pass you on to the seller who takes it from there. Secondly by using this model they could also include direct insurers who didnt want to sell via brokers and other intermediaries who have a panel of insurers but they are all quoting on standard terms. 

At the time a small number of brokers thought actually, we are 90% of the way there already so just changed their websites so rather than showing the one recommended policy it shows all the policies listed by price. But they are still a broker so you still buy from them and they will be missing direct only insurers. It was a nice idea but they were small and didnt have the marketing budgets so pretty much disappeared. You see one occasionally but it's rare. 

Ignoring Van and Landlords the direct model has not really taken off that well for SME insurance. It's enough that Direct Line for Business is still going on etc but it's been a slow uphill struggle. So aggregators wanted to do business insurance, it was too complex, not really enough sellers with an online quote to buy process etc to bother creating a real aggregator for it so instead they came across Simply Business who had a very large panel, a decent website and could already list results like an aggregator. Deal done and they went live, aggregators are very much about showing you can do stuff others can't so the other aggregators tried to do the same and Simply Business was the obvious choice.

I haven't looked in years but last time I did they were still operating as a broker, no "clearing house" or any other such nonsense, you buy from them, pay them, they send the policies etc. It could be they have changed but would be surprised if they had.