18 April
(source: in-house)
Car Insurance Brokers
In the past, many used car insurance brokers
to find the cheapest motor insurance. It was a good idea to check,
perhaps, 30 to 50 quotes from the broker's panel of car insurers to get
a competitive deal.
Nowadays, with price comparison sites that can check 1000s of prices,
they have largely replaced car insurance brokers as the
service of first choice for a car insurance comparison.
Of course, the best deal identified by a price comparison site - if you
choose to compare car insurance in this way - may well still be one of
numerous car insurance brokers. It's just that people typically find
them via a more powerful quote comparison system nowadays rather than
by going direct to car insurance brokers.
There are certain situations where going direct to car
insurance brokers is merited, however. For example, the popular broker
Endsleigh offers low cost car insurance cover for young drivers.
Hastings Direct is a competitive broker across all car insurance
groups. Another broker, Yes car insurance, offers good value for
over-25s with an older car.
Clearly, if you're not keen on using a car insurance comparison site -
perhaps due to a bad experience with one in the past - car
insurance brokers are an excellent alternative route to low
cost cover, whatever your circumstances.
There was a concern in the past that car insurance brokers,
because they financed themselves entirely via their commissions, could
be biased towards the higher paying car insurance companies, even where
their quotes were less competitve than other insurance companies on
their panel but where the others paid them less.
Certainly, this was a big problem with car insurance
brokers in the past. It isn't nowadays, however. The main reason for
this is that because most people find cover through comparison sites
now, if car insurance brokers were to allow their
commisions to render them more expensive, they would hugely reduce
their business. The modern car insurance market largely precludes
old-style commission-driven practices.
Thus, car insurance brokers still have much to offer in the
modern car insurance market place, indeed more than they did
previously, but, most people will get to them indirectly, via a car
insurance comparison system, rather than by the direct route.
Some car insurance brokers have been forced out of business
owing to this need for ultra-compatitive practices. Thus, only the
leanest and fittest survive. This is good for consumers whether they
have a favourite broker that they wish to use or they prefer to find
one indirectly through a comparison site.
|