Travel insurance goes bananas but doesn’t find the cheapest quote
Written by Karen Bryan
Has travel insurances gone bananas? Well Quotebanana.co.uk appear to think that a zany name is going to attract buyers of travel insurance with a strapline of “Don’t monkey around, pick the best of the bunch”. I hesitate to call Quotebanana a price comparison site as it predominately features insurance companies which are part of the AA group of companies. However I decided to give it a go for annual travel insurance in Europe for a couple. The cheapest quote of £59.10 was with Only Insurance.
I did a search with Direct-Travel.co.uk, from whom I purchased our European annual policy and it was priced at £46. The morale of the story – it’s always worth shopping around on more than one site and checking exactly what is covered by a policy, payout limits and excesses.
photo by Darren Hester
Totally agree, the price comparison sites have never been impartial. I’m unable to get onto confused.com because their minimum commission is £5 – that’s roughly what it would cost you to insure yourself for a week in Europe… Does that seem right?
XL Insurance it would seem fairer if confused.com took a percentage commission rather than a minimum which as you point out if almost the cost of a one week policy in Europe.
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Hi Karen, thanks for your reply!
I totally agree,,, though moneysupermarket takes a minimum 25% and that also means you have to price accordingly – because we choose to sell for a fair price… we only have a 20% margin!
xi, it is a bit of a dilemma for you as, even if your price is really potential customers may not find your site. Would it be sensible for you to add a bit to your prices to cover the commission charges and if your price was still very competitive you’d get lots of customers.?
I didn’t realise that the commission percentage on moneysupermarket was as high as 25%.
It is a dilemma BUT, if we raised the price 5% and went on Moneysupermarket – we’dl make nothing and to raise it further would make it less competitive… we launched this brand with the intention of giving people the best possible value to the customer but travel insurance is a hard thing to start conversations about ;)
XI, there is no easy answer to how to prosper in a very competitive environment. Of course I’m biased but I think that the Europe a la Carte blog is at least as good as some travel blogs which are very high profile but you have to get noticed and having a good product/service alone doesn’t seem to be enough.