Amazon Launches Insurance Comparison Site in the UK

Amazon is launching a home insurance portal in the UK, challenging established comparison sites such as Money supermarket, Compare the Market, Go Compare, and Confused.com – each has more than 100 insurers signed up. The new portal, Amazon Insurance Store, allows customers to compare home insurance prices and includes customer reviews, insurance company ratings, and the rates at which claims were accepted for the policies offered. Amazon has said its aim is to simplify tedious form-filling, slimming down the process and requiring customers to answer “essential questions” only to get a quote.

Amazon already offers a range of financial products such as credit and gift cards, Amazon Pay, and a “buy now, pay later” service with Barclays UK. However, a move into online price comparison services has proved difficult,?as Google has previously tried and failed in this market as they launched a tool called Google Compare in 2012, which compared credit cards, mortgages, and car insurance. In 2016 the platform was shut down after not gaining much traction and producing little revenue. Although, Amazon is predicted to be more successful as Jessica Pok, an analyst at Peel Hunt has stated “we believe Amazon will be a major threat if it earnestly invests and focuses its efforts on this market. For Amazon, not only does it already reach the majority of UK households, but it has an abundance of first-party customer data that it can use for targeting.”

The online portal will be available for all Amazon customers by the year-end.?