Compare the Market
Making Life Easier/simpler/less hassle
I love a new time saving and hassle removal bit of technology. So I was very intrigued to learn more about the new Compare the market Simples proposition. Just before holiday I was invited to my favourite bit of London, Shoreditch (check out this amazing graffitti!) 
to spend a few hours understanding and then reviewing the product. It’s in test mode (beta) at the moment with a few gremlins being ironed out, and I got to have a go at testing and breaking it! I am a good tester of technology. I used to do it a lot at EE, one day when we launched the new website we all did an over-nighter, spending 12 hours tearing the website apart trying to break every page, process and purchase journey!
What…Homework??!!
I had a bit of homework before attending the workshop. I had to dig out all my insurance document for home, car and travel insurance. I have all 3 somewhere. As you can see from this picture my filing is not at its best. And it took me some time to locate the insurance docs. Although handily I did find car insurance docs from 3 years ago 😉
My insurance documents were located, either in paper or email format. And I had to recall without cheating and looking who my insurers were and how much I paid for the premium. This wasn’t easy…and I had only just renewed them all!!
Recalling my Insurance Companies & Premiums Paid
For my home insurance I knew it was renewed in March, but could not remember who with. It cost around £200 I thought. My travel insurance had just been renewed with Debenhams insurance and I knew that cost around £40 for annual policy. Car insurance, I thought it was Admiral costing £220. Renewed in March.
I got most of it wrong LOL. It just goes to show insurance is one of those things that you have to have, but you go through that process sometimes automatically, and particularly me, recall nothing about it. I find insurance renewal a boring task!! Boring but I never auto-renew and spend some time searching for a better deal to save some cash.
Simples from Compare the Market
The Simples app is ‘simply’ described as a cloud/virtual based holding place for all your insurance documents. And its uses clever technology, artificial intelligence, to pull out the key details and gives you a handy summary of key information.
You upload the information either scanning it in or sending it via email. Easy or rather simples.
The clever stuff
Car
I loved the summary pages, it gave me the policy number, renewal date, premium paid. What’s included and what’s not included. It also told me my insurance Debenhams was £283 (but I know I got £65 cash back when I took out the policy). SO I remembered the price but not the insurer. We have a Ford SMax BTW. And live in Hertfordshire. 10 years no claims discount for you to compare 🙂
It also told me how many days until MOT due, as its checks with DVLA database. Clever stuff. And it shows the telephone number if you need to call them.
I also gave me a defaqto rating, a rating of how strong the policy is. My policy has been rated as just 2/5 stars. This didn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy, I’m guessing my policy is low because it doesn’t include legal and breakdown cover? I fed this back to the team, the lack of warm & fuzzy feeling and lack of understanding what defaqto meant.
Travel
My travel policy also with Debenhams shows all the included people my family. I have a 3/5-star rating for policy. A bit better than car. This policy cost £42 per year (including USA). Chatting to the other personal finance experts in the room I have a great deal here. An annual policy is a great idea if you do maybe 2 or more trips abroad. We tend to have 1 family holiday, 1 holiday by ourselves as couple and maybe another with our girl or boy mates for golf/ibiza etc.
Home
My home policy is with Towergate (not sure who they are??) and looking through the details again it’s a bit of a rubbish policy. It has a lot of exclusions. I went for cheap here and it’s not good. So I will review this properly. As a comparison though its contents and buildings, includes accidental, and is for a 4 bed semi detached house in Hertfordshire.
Peace of Mind
I have set up reminders so I get a text when all policies are up for renewal. And I feel very much empowered that I now know more about my insurance policies, costs and inclusions. Anything that gives me peace of mind and removes hassle is a winner for me.
Give it a go yourself
Why not have a go yourself. Sign up to an account and add in your insurance documents.
- Visit simples.uk.com
- Sign up for Simples with your Comparethemarket.com login
- Add a car, travel and/or home insurance policy
- Use the text message chat widget to speak to and ask questions of your policy
This post is a collaborative post with Compare the Market. Meerkats were involved, but were not hurt in the process;-)
