Last time I explained a little about how we arrive at our quotes and this time I will share a little more about the quotes we show you.

Before we launched our service we spent a lot of time looking at the competition, obviously we wanted to include what they did well and improve on what they did badly. That seems easy enough, but we soon discovered some of the features we saw and didn’t like were compromises to show all the information needed to provide a useful service without overloading the site user.

When I was searching I would get results with a headline like “287 policies found from £5.87”. Sounds impressive! The first fifteen were genuinely useful and what I had searched for. After the first fifteen I started to see the same companies coming up again but with features I had not asked for (trying to ‘sell me up’) or for different destinations (looking for a European policy and they were showing me worldwide) and then annual policies started to appear when I was searching for a single trip.

Looking at the results with a critical eye, over 75% of all the policies I was offered were for the wrong type and destinations. Of the right kind of policy the same companies were coming up again and again with increasing prices and levels of cover. Now most providers seem to offer at least three different types of cover, for arguments sake we will call them bronze, silver and gold. Broadly speaking there are five geographical areas from the UK to worldwide and two types of policy, annual and single trip. Taken all together this gives nearly twenty entries in the results for every insurance provider. It is easy to see how they managed to produce nearly three hundred results.

Our design goal was for a simple to use impartial service and so we to had to start making those compromises. This time we decided to limit our results to just the type of travel insurance that you are looking for and just for the destination that you asked for. That made sure that all the results are relevant. Now we wanted a fair like for like comparison. We have limited our results to only each travel insurance providers entry level policy. It should come as no surprise that every provider is prepared to sell you more cover for more money.

What our results do reveal is what a companies attitude is. Looking at the excess tells you if the insurance provider is trying to dissuade you from making a claim in the first place. Looking at the level of cover tells you if they are trying to limit their possible exposure. If you want a low excess with good cover then you will be paying a higher premium and that is the dilemma with travel insurance comparison.

How are you meant to do that with a list of nearly three hundred policies? We hope that our design decisions have left you with a short enough list that you can make those informed choices on a like for like basis. If you need more cover than we are listing then pick a company that has the right attitude and get a more detailed quote. If we are not giving you the right answers then let us know. We are always trying to innovate and improve and we welcome the feedback.

Cheap, Cheaper and Cheapest?

Avoid the policies that are so cheap that they do not offer you the protection you need, some have no baggage or cancellation cover.

Avoid policies that will charge you way too much excess on every claim, that is just makes it cheap for them to offer the cover.

Buy the policy that gives you the cover you need at the cheapest price it is offered. The difference may just be a few pence more for thousands of pounds more protections.

Tweet

Share

Send to Kindle