Surely it should be possible to get an insurance quote anonymously?

[krummyday]

When getting car/home insurance quotes, you have to enter a lot of personal information. Most of the information is relevant to the quote, but personal details like your name, contact details and exact address (rather than just postcode) usually aren't. They don't need to email me the quote - I'm happy to just see it on screen and perhaps download it - but of course they want my contact details for profiling and data mining. I'd prefer to only give these details to the company I decide to purchase from, not all the others.

In the past I used false names and throwaway email addresses, but now they seem to recognise that and tell me (after filling in the whole form) that they can't give me a quote.

Does this bother you too? I feel it should be a legal right to get a quote with only the minimum data required.

I work in car insurance. Yes we do need to know your name. A soft credit check is run every time you run a quote. The CUE database is also checked.
Every single piece of information you put into your quote is a rating factor for the UW. The only thing we cannot rate on sex/gender. That’s it.
When we see policies set up by people who have done numerous quotes changing details on each one, it will trigger our review team to run additional checks as it can be seen as quote manipulation and potentially fraudulent.

That's interesting to know, and explains why I was refused a quote. But why do you need to run a credit check, and why don't you inform me that's what you are doing? If there was an explanation, and if I understood and conceded why the credit check was necessary, I would be happier to give my details. Why the secrecy?

Surely credit checks require explicit permission @OrangeFluff ?

It’s a soft credit check not a hard credit check.
Credit checks will determine what payment options we will offer- are we happy to give you a loan meaning you pay it back to us by direct debit monthly?
Do you already have a debt with us on an old policy? If you do we won’t offer you another policy.
Insurance is based entirely on statistics. People with bad payment histories are statistically likely to have more chaotic lives and are more of a risk to the UW. They may get higher premiums due to this.

They do. It's in their faq , but let's be honest most people don't read them. I seem to remember it mentions it in the small print you have to tick that you've read before you click 'get quotes' as well.

Soft credit checks are run every single time you do any kind of quote, be it for pet, car, home etc.
We only run the hard credit checks when you choose to accept the policy and pay monthly (take a loan) at which point you’ll be asked for consent to run it.

I always pay my insurance up front - and I ticked a box to say that is the option I would choose - so there is no excuse for the insurer to credit check me. I filled in the form once only, using correct but depersonalised details, because I genuinely wanted an anonymous quote. I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation, and I wasn't asked to agree to any terms and conditions that might have had small print.

As I said it’s a soft credit check which is not the same as a hard check.
Its also used to help identify you and base your premiums on.
Also on the comparison sites you may select to pay annually- but they will always give you the monthly figure too if available.

But it's not a service, it's merely a quotation. They are touting for your business, nothing more.

You can generally see a quote on the screen if using companies websites directly as opposed to the comparison site. It then usually gives you the option to save or email yourself a copy if you want to.
My friend feels the same as you and doesn’t like putting her personal information in unless she’s buying the policy, so she usually puts a different date of birth/ initial etc (eg 10/01/85 instead of 09/02/95) into the information box if she is just looking for quotes and has never had an issue. She sees the prices and then when ready goes back to whoever she’s going to purchase the policy from and then puts her real information in. She said the price is pretty much always the same as whatever the quote was.

Sorry that meant to say (eg 10/01/85 instead of 09/02/85*)

She obviously doesn’t put 10 years apart!

But why would checking how the premium changes if I put the excess up, or take off accidental damage cover, etc be “potentially fraudulent” and need flagging?

If I book a holiday, I’m not banned from asking how much the hotel will cost room-only compared with B&B. If I buy a new car, I can ask how much with and without alloy wheels etc. Why the lack of transparency when I want to buy insurance?

People on this thread were talking about changing occupation, address, name, dob- I was referring to that. Not changing excesses.

Research has shown that even your name impacts the quotation an insurer will give you. There doesn't seem to be any regulation to prevent insurers from discriminating on such unreasonable bases, which is pretty outrageous given that insurance is a legal requirement/necessity for the majority (if not all) people for something in their lives.

It's not a free service, they need to make money for the software and time that is required to provide you with a quote. They earn that money by selling your data.

But why would checking how the premium changes if I put the excess up, or take off accidental damage cover, etc be “potentially fraudulent” and need flagging?

That's not what this thread is about though. Of course you can do all those things - and most comparison websites will adjust the quote as you go along so you can chop/change what cover you ask for and how much you want your excess to be.

We're talking about people changing their personal details when they're getting a quote.

A comparison site is a service. They provide quotes as their service, they don’t provide insurance. So, no, they aren’t touting for business, that is their business.

Yes. That happened to me. It was actually really sneaky the way some of them operated. They'd call me by name and say things like we want to check whether this life insurance product is still the right one for you. I asked the name of the firm and they told me the correct one. It was implied that they were calling from my insurance provider. I was really annoyed and now make sure I uncheck all the contact me by phone/ email options.

@coffeecupsandwaxmelts we’re talking about people changing their personal details because they don’t want their inbox flooding, or a tonne of spam calls, or multiple credit checks on their file, when they are just trying to work out the best quote.

Nobody is complaining about putting their real details in when they are actually applying.

Unfortunately as far as I can see, their real business is getting your personal details and flogging them on to other companies

I always invert a couple of numbers in the phone number. It's not necessary for the actual quote and stops me getting a load of nuisance calls when they sell your info

I know that.

But you won't get a truly accurate quote without putting in your personal details - that's the whole point.

Yea. Exactly.

If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.

The reason comparison sites can be free is because they want your data. That’s what makes them their money. Putting false or incomplete data in is useless to them, and so they have a built a system that doesn’t allow it.

You can’t get an anonymous quote. It doesn’t exist. I understand that you wish it did, but it doesn’t.

Insurers are in the business of aggregating and underwriting risks. Your risk profile is built from multiple pieces of information - including your soft credit check. You may well find that people who default on their credit cards are more likely to suffer a loss event, so this is relevant information for the insurers. It’s individual, not your post code based information. the more information insurers have about you, the better they can assess your risk.

Your actions, in lying about your name and details is indicative of a poor risk for them. Congratulations - they now think you’re a fraud risk. Which you are, statistically, because you’re a proven liar.