New Insurance Price Comparison Site

[Darkangelsdelite]

As far as i know, this hasn't been made public yet as we only got briefed on this today.
As most of you know, RBS doesn't allow any of its brands to be used on confused.com or any other price comparison site.

As of today RBS has been launched a site under its tesco brand, which compares most of the brands RBS have along with other major insurers (AA, More than to name a couple) Not only compares by price but also compares other aspects of the cover to give the consumer a better idea of the cover before they buy.

The link is Compare cheap car insurance quotes - Tesco Compare

I haven't personally tried it yet as not had time, just thought some of you might be interested.
I'll update with more info as i get it.


DA

[LemonTwist]

I really don't get it.

Only a couple of months ago, Direct Line were running TV adverts telling people not to use aggregators. But now their parent company RBS has teamed up with Tesco to set up its own aggregator.

How can this be? Is Direct Line really 100% owned by RBS, or just partially? If 100%, how can it maintain an anti-aggregator stance even though its parent company now has an aggregator of its own?

I really don't get it!!

[Darkangelsdelite]

I'll dig out the memo when i go back to work for the exact statement but there was something in there about RBS wanting to keep Direct Line separate as it offers extra covers that the other brands don't (keeping NCD when hit by uninsured driver etc).
RBS hasn't "teamed up" with Tesco, RBS is the backing behind Tesco Personal Finance, so all the loans and insurance are administered by RBS on tesco's behalf.
Yes RBS owns Direct Line 100%, Dont know about its stance on aggregtor sites, at a guess i would say that as RBS has always opted out of all other sited (confused.com, money supermarket etc) it has had to move with the times as it is potentially missing out on thousands if not hundreds of thousands of potential internet quotes.

[barracad]

Originally Posted by Darkangelsdelite

As far as i know, this hasn't been made public yet as we only got briefed on this today.

Well it was in The Mail On Sunday last week, and I think I've seen about it before that actually, so nice that they keep you in the loop!

As for RBS launching this site under one of its trading banners, whilst slating them on another (i.e. tescocompare v Direct Line) then either different RBS departments don't know what each other are doing, or it is pure coprporate hypocrisy!

[Darkangelsdelite]

The memo we received about this came directly from the head of marketing for RBS Insurance on the 13th, whether this was leaked to the press before hand i couldn't tell you, but it was the first I'd heard of it certainly. . As i said earlier, Direct Line are mentioned in the memo so they are obviously aware of the "hypocrisy".
Whether direct line sign up or not, i can only see this as being a good thing for the consumer, giving them even more choice of insurers and more chance to find one to suit their needs.


DA

[barracad]

Agreed. But what would have been better would for RBS companies to have signed up with the other comparison sites in the first place, instead of just creating their own.

At this rate, we'll need a comparison site to compare all the comparison sites.

[Darkangelsdelite]

Yeah that's true, but then that would just be too easy wouldn't it. You know what these big corporate companies are like, they'd use Semtex to crack open a nut, just because they can!