This article is re-posted from SirValUse blog.
With the beginning of autumn, the fight for insurance clients in the automotive sector has started again. Each year, on November 30, insurance clients in Germany have the opportunity to change their car insurance provider. This year, to help consumers review policies, transparo.de launched to directly compete with check24.de, the reigning leader in insurance policy comparison sites. GfK SirValUse (now GfK's User Experience team) used GfK's Media Efficiency Panel to understand each website's scope, the percentage share of people in Germany who used these websites in a given timeframe.
In Germany, consumers rarely obtain insurance contracts at the insurance office ‘around the corner.’ Most consumers, who want to change providers and prefer market transparency, visit websites that offer comparisons of various providers and their tariffs. One major reason for using an insurance comparison website is to get the least expensive tariff available. The biggest player in this area is check24.de with twice as many online users as the year before.
If you look at the scope of car insurance provider websites and comparison websites, you will see that they gained more coverage during October and November 2011. In fact, all insurance companies in Germany were able to increase their online scope.
In 2011, the insurance companies Huk-Coburg, WGV und Talanx launched the brand transparo.de in order to compete with check24.de. The surprising news was that transparo.de gained a scope of 1% in November. Although more than most of the insurance websites, it cannot reach the 4.8% check24.de achieved in November 2011.
It is well-know that neither check24.de nor transparo.de provide an overview of all available tariffs. Check24.de does not show the tariffs provided by Ergo Direkt, HDI24, Huk-Coburg, WGV and WGV-Himmelblau. Transparo.de, on the other hand, does not provide tariff information of the Allianz Group. It is therefore recommended to use both websites in order to make an informed decision. But only a few customers actually do this.
The analysis of the cross usage of the two portals for October and November shows, that half of the users of transparo.de also used check24.de. On the other hand, only 13% of the check24.de users also used transparo.de. The users of both sites are active and loyal. The future will show, whether transparo.de will be able to establish itself as second big player in the insurance comparison website business.
The MEP includes round about 16.000 private households in Germany and records the internet usage of more than 32.000 people, which can be considered as representative for Germany. Scope refers to the percentage share of people in Germany, which used a website during a given time frame.
