A month ago I insured an additional car ( Subaru BRZ) with no available NCD to apply and was pleasantly surprised to get it for £313 from Darwin, of whom I had never heard.
Today my renewal for the Outlander came from QuoteMeHappy, £400, which was well up on the £351 they charged me last year.
Went to Moneysupermarket.com for comparisons, Darwin was the cheapest at £278 with £500 total excess legal cover, courtesy car, and 17 years NCD. 5 Star policy.
Cancelled the renewal with QMH, whose online portal then dropped their renewal offer by 20% to £320.
QMH is owned by Aviva.
Darwin is owned by Direct Line Group which is owned by Aviva
So after about two hours faffing about (because Darwin makes you have separate portal accounts for each policy) I have moved from Aviva to Aviva and saved 30% of my premium.
Nil carborundum.
My two Darwin policies also include driving other cars (not limited to service loan cars) which seems to have disappeared from a lot of policies.
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VAG own various car companies all with different prices / strategies / target customers etc, similar with Stellantis. Ins companies no different in that respect.
Though the main difference is the actual product, the majority of us have set criteria and then just go with the cheapest quote at the time. We tend not to have brand loyalty in insurance like we might have with car makers.
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Good point Bobby.
A few years ago (2021) they were obliged to stop offering new customers a better deal than existing ones. However - this only applies to the specific channel through which they bought the existing policy. This is a massive opportunity for them to do what they have always done and hook new customers through other channels at better rates. Specific channel means for example the same comparison site that you used when you took the original policy out. QMH wasn't on the comparison site I used.
I honestly can't remember how I took out the first QMH policy on the Outlander but it's pretty clear that they are still 'tuning' premiums, also known as 'price walking' customers. I wouldn't be surprised to find that they keep changing the products offered to new customers too, like the energy companies who keep exiting customers on old tariffs that are no longer available.
Although I suspect Darwin and QMH might still be siloed from each other, Aviva is probably being quite smart about this. I think I had a win (and I did) but what actually happened is that they tried it on and although that didn't work, they still kept the customer.
As I am now looking after 4 cars I have just created a spreadsheet for recording all the premiums, renewal dates, quote-seeking dates, service dates, MoT dates, and VED dates - I nearly missed the Outlander's MoT last year. As it was I had to park it for a nearly a week while waiting for the earliest appointment.
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Insurance Watch - QuoteMeHappy>>>Darwin - Bobby
