My partner and I (cool, I sound like the Queen) are currently reviewing our car insurance policies and so we’re just getting a few quotes.
So I proceeded (now I sound like a police man) over to Tesco.com and used their car insurance policy quoting system. Underwritten by “UK Insurance Limited (UKI)” and with a URL in the format https://uk1.tesco-insurance.co.uk/insurance/motor/PLBxxx/yourdetails.do;jsessionid=sss we received a quote of £469.39. Not bad, but I wondered if my bank (Nationwide) could beat that quote – so I went and used their insurance quotation system…
Nationwide Car Insurance is underwritten by Churchill, but also has URLs in the format https://uk1.u-k-i.com/insurance/motor/PLBxxx/yourdetails.do;jsessionid=sss . Hang on – those URLs look familar, and could U-K-I stand for UK Insurance Limited as used by Tesco… I wonder how we managed the much lower quote of £387.45 from what appears to be the same company with the same details (even the excesses from Nationwide were lower!).
U-K-I.com appears to be registered by RBS INSURANCE SERVICES LTD (rbs.co.uk) via Netnames. Same as churchill.co.uk (where we earlier got a quote of £413). So Churchill= UK Insurance Limited (UKI) = Royal Bank of Scotland.
So three quotes from between £469.39 to £387.45 for the same drivers, the same car, at the same address – all from essentially the same company… Interesting….
Things like this make me want to spend time finding out out of all the many insurance companies out there, who are actually “differently owned” from the others. But I’ve got better things to do with my time (as my GF lays her hand on my shoulder and reads what I write 😉 ).