Insurance Comparison Websites

[MSalman]

Hello,

I was hoping car insurance experts out there can help me out. As part of research for an idea, I was wondering:

How does an insurance comparison website work? So first it collects information about the vehicle and driver/s. This part is clear. Does it (a) search it's own database for matching insurance products? Or does it (b) directly speak to the systems of third party insurance companies?

I am looking at a market where insurance companies do not have the technical means for the most part to provide ways to integrate with their systems. So option (a) above seems like the only possible solution. I want to allow insurance companies to enter their insurance products into our database. However, I was hoping to get a template to start from. Something that may be sort of a standard form that insurance companies use when adding their products to comparison websites operating in the UK.

Thanks.

 

[fisicx]

I want to allow insurance companies to enter their insurance products into our database.

Never going to happen. The whole system has to be automated and constantly updating. This will happen using an API, feed, scraping or some other integration method. Nobody is going to fill in a form on order to get their products on your database.

 

[mattk]

Most comparison sites operate by making realtime calls to the individual insurers.

As @fisicx says, it will be very difficult to store details of insurance products in a database as premiums are based upon a number of factors which are weighted based on the risk profile of the provider.

Unless you have a very simple insurance product, this will be difficult.

The other approach is to do what comparison sites do for products like life insurance, critical illness etc. They offer an indicative premium and then pass the user through to the insurers site for a more detailed quote. The problem with this is that I imagine the dropout rate is enormous as the comparison site's premium are almost always lower than the real cost.

A third approach is that you could offer your services to the insurance companies and built them APis which will allow them to provide realtime quotes for your comparison site.

 

[MSalman]

What

Most comparison sites operate by making realtime calls to the individual insurers.

As @fisicx says, it will be very difficult to store details of insurance products in a database as premiums are based upon a number of factors which are weighted based on the risk profile of the provider.

Unless you have a very simple insurance product, this will be difficult.

The other approach is to do what comparison sites do for products like life insurance, critical illness etc. They offer an indicative premium and then pass the user through to the insurers site for a more detailed quote. The problem with this is that I imagine the dropout rate is enormous as the comparison site's premium are almost always lower than the real cost.

A third approach is that you could offer your services to the insurance companies and built them APis which will allow them to provide realtime quotes for your comparison site.

Thanks for the excellent reply.

Let's say we implement an API for their legacy system. What's the starting point? I have all the data on drivers and cars.

What am I looking to extract from their legacy system?

 

[fisicx]

Let's say we implement an API for their legacy system. What's the starting point? I have all the data on drivers and cars.

What am I looking to extract from their legacy system?

You pay them. There is no legacy system. You want access to their API you pay for it.

I have all the data on drivers and cars.

What do you mean by this?

 

[MSalman]

What if they have no API? Like I said in my original post, the market I am looking at is quite immature. Most use legacy systems.

I meant at the time of querying their system, I have data on driver and car as this is submitted by the end users looking for insurance.

 

[fisicx]

I'm confused. All the major insurance companies will have an API or some other way to get information from their databases. What exactly is immature?

What normally happens is you fill in a form and this connects to a number of databases which return example quotes. It requires a lot of processing and very fast servers. It's not something you can just knock up with a template and a form.

It's going to be expensive and time consuming to build a comparison site. Just getting access to insurance company data can cost thousands.

 

[dotcomdude]

How does an insurance comparison website work? So first it collects information about the vehicle and driver/s. This part is clear. Does it (a) search it's own database for matching insurance products? Or does it (b) directly speak to the systems of third party insurance companies?

I am looking at a market where insurance companies do not have the technical means for the most part to provide ways to integrate with their systems.

As others have said, any insurance company or broker wanting to sell car insurance online in the UK will already use one of the established software houses (CDL, SSP etc) to provide their quote and buy functionality.

A comparison website would capture the details from the client, then transmit these over to the software provider through an API call, who will then return quotes for one or more policies tailored to the customer's requirements and handle the transaction if the customer wants to proceed.

It's a very heavily regulated industry and you need very deep pockets to get anywhere nowadays.

Car insurance comparison in the UK is very much dominated by confused, moneysupermarket, compare the market and gocompare at the moment. I'm working on changing this, so if you have a million ready to invest hit me up