Insurers often have very good reasons for not wanting to be listed on price comparison websites – some are simple, and others are a little harder to understand.

Over the years, car and home insurance has been obtained by a ‘broker’ will do the hard work of finding the quotes for you. It used to be a shop on your local High Street, but these days the price comparison websites take on this role (see our article on how shopping for insurance had changed). The brokers don’t charge you for this service, instead the insurance companies simply pay the broker a commission for everyone they get to join them.

Some insurance companies don’t like to pay these fees to brokers – they would rather encourage you to go to them directly and make your insurance quote a little cheaper as a result. This is the way Direct Line became so successful for example, and why they still aren’t listed on price comparison websites – they have always prided themselves on the fact that they ‘cut out the middle man’ and that you as customer can go directly to them to buy your insurance.

Other insurance companies are more specialist, and the price comparison websites may not be able to deal with the specific questions and details they require, and some smaller insurance companies may not have the technical ability to be able to provide the comparison websites with a quotation.

Whatever the reason, there will always be insurance companies that do not want to be, or simply can’t be listed on price comparison websites and as a result, we all need to know who they are so we can make sure we are getting the best quotes from all the insurers.