Comparing / Buying insurance?

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Steep

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Picked this off the AdrianFlux website although it's a couple of years old now,

Who owns who -

Confused.com are owned by Admiral, they also own elephant.co.uk, Bell Direct and Diamond, the womens car insurance specialist.

GoCompare are “independent” but have received a £30m loan from esure. If they can’t pay esure back in cash, esure become a major shareholder. That’s according to the Insurance Times.

Compare the Market is owned by Budget. This one is a bit naughty, as all of the brands quoted are Budget group companies – but they don’t make that obvious – they also own Dial Direct, “Local Broker“, ibuyeco, Quote Mart, and Junction who run the insurance arms of the Post Office, Marks and Spencer, Debenhams, Bradford & Bingley, Homebase and yesinsurance.com.

MoneySupermarket have just floated (in what was described as an “unfortunate” stock market debut, they failed to raise as much cash as had been hoped for, partly due to a recent Google penalty for link spamming which saw their web traffic shrink alarmingly!). As such they are independent.

So much for the main price comparison sites, what about some of the other big insurance brands?

HBOS Group owns Halifax Insurance, esure, Sheilas Wheels and First Alternative.
Royal & SunAlliance owns More Than
GroupAMA owns Carole Nash, Choice Quote, Bollington & Lark
AXA owns Swiftcover and has a share in Venture Preference. It also offers quotes as Lloyds TSB Insurance and insurance.co.uk
AON owns Firebond & Footman James
MMA owns Swinton, its4me & bullseye
Zurich owns Endsleigh
Fortis owns RIAS
Kwik-Fit Insurance Services owns Express Insurance
BDML Connect owns Lancaster
Fresh Insurance owns Ladybird and First Insurance
IAG owns Hastings Direct, People’s Choice, Diamond, Advantage, Open & Direct and Equity
RBS Group – the Royal Bank of Scotland Group includes Direct Line, Churchill, Privilege, NIG as well as insurance sold branded as Tesco Insurance, Natwest, Virgin Money, MBNA, BMW Insurance, MINI Insurance, Mint, Egg, Nationwide, Age Concern, Vauxhall Insurance and several others!
 
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End of the day, they're all underwritten by only a few companies anyway!!!
 
I've had 2 policies with Adrian Flux

On my Landrover they were the cheapest by a country mile, so far i've rung them 3 times to add body mods, none has changed the premium nor have they applied an admin charge to add them on so it's a:thumbs: for me
 
Steep said:
Compare the Market is owned by Budget. This one is a bit naughty, as all of the brands quoted are Budget group companies – but they don’t make that obvious –
Click to expand...

Well that bit is wrong for starters. I got my quite for a non-budget insurance company off compare the market.
 
Steep said:
Compare the Market is owned by Budget. This one is a bit naughty, as all of the brands quoted are Budget group companies – but they don’t make that obvious – they also own Dial Direct, “Local Broker“, ibuyeco, Quote Mart, and Junction who run the insurance arms of the Post Office, Marks and Spencer, Debenhams, Bradford & Bingley, Homebase and yesinsurance.com.
Click to expand...
Actually that is way off the mark.

Budget Insurance Services Limited (BISL) are an umberella company that owns:

comparethemarket.com
fusion call centres
bennets bike insurance
Budget insurance
ibuyeco
dial direct
ACL/ULR
frontline
and junction.

all are seperate companies with separate profit/targets etc.

Junction is an "affinity partner" who negotiate with "good" brand names such as M&S, post office, etc to work together to sell their insurance. All we do is sell their insurance and take a comission. We dont "run" their "insurance arms".

I know this for a fact as I look after the many servers that present the insurance quotes from our affinity partners and our internal services back to comaprethemarket.com.


I hope that puts the record straight.
 
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From personal experience, Post Office, Tesco and Coop insurance are all handled by BISL. My biggest problem when buying insurance is making sure the company quoting is not handled by BISL, my experiences with that organisation have been less than satisfactory on every occasion I've dealt with them.
 
Sadly call-centre turn over rates are high and the quality of people you get in them can be dissapointing, but BISL are working on raising the bar with regards this.
 
Steep said:
Picked this off the AdrianFlux website although it's a couple of years old now,

Who owns who -
HBOS Group owns Halifax Insurance, esure, Sheilas Wheels and First Alternative.
Click to expand...
HBOS (now part of LBG) Only own Halifax Insurance now. esure, Sheila's Wheels etc were last year sold back to the guy who originally set up esure.
 
Loving esure at the mo - phoned them tonight about a change of address and combined with now parking on a drive instead of the street, got told my insurance was now £150 cheaper - result......

.....mind you, I also smashed my windscreen today, so that's £100 gone :(
 
recently amazed by Admirals multi car policy,
wifey (her "company" car insured as such), daughter (early twenties) and old fart me for a VERY reasonasble amount of dosh.

laddo who passed his test six months ago.
bought him an Atoz and got quotes from £1400 to £5400.
the cheapest being Admiral.
rang and asked if we could put him on the multi car policy.
£750

shocked and stunned.
 
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