Why choosing direct motor
insurance makes sense
Wait
a minute - most will say on this issue - are you saying we shouldn't
use a price comparison site to compare 1000s of prices? And they might
go on: You're not seriously advocating going direct to a single car
insurer as a better alternative, are you? How will you know you've got
the best deal unless you compare?
Okay. Let's look at what price comparison sites do. They check prices
for all the policies on their books and list these for you. They check
lots of very different policies and, as you'd expect, present you with
quite a scatter of prices. Clustered at the cheaper end will be all the
'no frills' policies - that is, those policies where the insurance
company has saved money by passing significant costs back to you,
should you need to claim. These are the policies that are easiest to
identify through a price comparison site but they are the very policies
that even their providers would agree are very paired down and, we
would suggest, are better left on the shelf.
It might be argued that even if the cheapest quotes on a price
comparison site are better avoided, these services can still be used to
compare prices for more inclusive policies higher up the price range.
And, given that some price comparison sites do provide some summarised
policy data, there is some truth in this. In practice, however, it's
hard to properly compare these policies in terms of their associated
cover using a price comparison site alone. You generally need to
consult with each insurance company's website for adequate policy
details.
As it is always sensible to build in quality control in terms of the
cover that's associated with your policy - and the only way to do this
is to know exactly what that cover includes or excludes - this does
rather limit the utility of price comparison sites if you take a
sensible view as to what is desirable to have in your policy.
Which is why we advocate going for direct motor insurance in the first
place. If you restrict your search to the leading, well-known, car
insurance companies, you automatically build in price control. The big
players in the competitive UK insurance market only remain big players
by price-matching their competitors for like car insurance policies.
The wide range of prices generated by price comparison sites is due to
comparing lots of very different policies. Were they to compare like
policies from the biggest companies, the spread of prices would be
minimal to the point of insignificance as a major determinant or focus
of policy choice.
In practice, this market place pricing effect can free up the consumer
to choose from these large companies on the basis of the cover. In
fact, these major companies put a lot of work into researching and
delivering the exact level of cover as standard that most people find
attractive. It's the very level of cover that you might want in an
accident. This certainly cannot be said of the cheapest policies on
price comparison sites.
So, if you accept that going for direct motor insurance is wise, you
can easily compare
car
insurance from these top
motor
insurers via good commercial sites such as this one. More..
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