If the old adage that “the best publicity is bad publicity” holds, then Christmas came early at JustEzi: we were criticised by Mark Milliner, Head of Personal Insurance at Suncorp in The Australian Financial Review of 1 November, 2010.
Suncorp’s head of personal insurance, Mark Milliner, has warned against the emerging presence of aggregators, saying the discount prices found on comparison websites are unsustainable and users are trading adequate protection for price
….he also said the emerging presence of insurance comparison sites suggested price was the only policy differentiator, which”couldn’t be more wrong or misleading”.
Conclusion: don’t trade protection for price.
We think Mr Milliner is absolutely correct in highlighting this – the terms and conditions of an insurance policy are of paramount importance when pricing the product.
However, we also think Santa Milliner doesn’t eat his own Christmas pudding.
As luck would have it, we got the opportunity of testing Mr Milliner’s assertion as the Mini is up for renewal this month. As part of our research we entered “Bingle” (an internet only brand offered by Suncorp) into an internet search engine – this is what came up:
Bingle Car Insurance Bingle offer cheaper car insurance by computer. Get a quote now. www.Bingle.com.au/Sydney
Cheap Car Insurance Australia – Online Car Insurance – Bingle Bingle Car Insurance offers cheap comprehensive car insurance policies in Australia. Get a free car insurance quote and buy cheap car insurance online. www.bingle.com.au/ – Cached – Similar
Contact Us – Cheap Car Insurance Australia – Bingle Contact Bingle Car Insurance Australia for enquiries on online car insurance …
www.bingle.com.au/car_insurance/contact-us – Cached Show more results from bingle.com.au
Lara Bingle Nude Pics Where the bloody hell are you? Bingle Bungles with Greg Bird, Brendan Fevola and Nude Photos published in German … Lara Bingle In Bikini for the Where the Bloody Hell Are You Campaign … www.webmelon.com.au/viewcategory.php?categoryid=22 – Cached – Similar
Leaving to one side the reference to the Bingle of the nude-Lara-kind, the phrase that stands out on all the Bingle links is “cheap”. Clicking on the link connected us to the Bingle website – the banner there looks like this:
This was an excellent start – who doesn’t want cheaper car insurance after all? Being made of very boring stuff at Just-Ezi, we did more research – our top 15 looks like this:
To avoid being labelled as ‘simplistic’ our analysis converts the premium and basic excess to a percentage of the offered agreed value – this produces a level the playing field as a higher excess can also be viewed as additional premium (to be paid when you make a claim).
It’s interesting to note the huge range of prices, excesses and ‘agreed value’ offered – it clearly pays to do some research. All these companies are APRA-regulated/ASIC-approved, and the “newcomers” are all cheaper than the established brands.
Secondly, we compared the terms and conditions of the policies offered by the 5 cheapest insurers with those of AAMI and NRMA. All 7 insurers offer broadly the same core coverage, the differences coming in some of the ancillary/optional benefits. AAMI and Real Insurance are the pick of the bunch, BINGLE – in terms of cover offered, is bottom of the list.
Mr Milliner, we think you’re trying to have your xmas pudding and eat it – with Bingle you are, in our opinion, trading cover for price – Bingle is cheap, but you’ll get less cover than the others in the Top 5. Go with AAMI (a Suncorp brand) and you get top cover, but it’ll cost you $200 more than Bingle (and the offered excess is higher and the agreed value lower)! Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Here comes the shameless plug: Just-Ezi will, in the new year, be launching v2 of our site – it will be bigger, broader and more accurate: it will also include a “cover comparison” table which will allow you to quickly and easily compare both price & coverage choice.
The current picture confusing? Yes…….which is why there’s a need for comparison websites.
