Comparethemarket.com.au is an Australian price comparison website operated by Compare the Market Pty Ltd, part of Innovation Holdings Australia Pty Ltd and BHL Holdings Limited. It offers a service for customers to compare a range of general insurance,

health insurance Health insurance or medical insurance (also known as medical aid in South Africa) is a type of insurance that covers the whole or a part of the risk of a person incurring medical expenses. As with other types of insurance, risk is shared among ma ...

life insurance Life insurance (or life assurance, especially in the Commonwealth of Nations) is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer or assurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death ...

, energy and personal finance products. The company is well known for its ‘ Compare the Meerkat’ marketing campaign created by communications agency VCCP and starring CGI Russian billionaire meerkat Aleksandr Orlov, voiced by Simon Greenall.

History in Australia

Comparethemarket.com.au was launched in Australia in 2012, six years after the launch of

comparethemarket.com Comparethemarket is a UK price comparison website, founded in 2006, that is part of the BGL Group. The website also offers other on-line companies the ability to provide their customers with a co-branded or white labelled comparison service. ...

in the United States & UK. Using the comparethemarket.com.au service, Australian customers can compare a number of products based on price, features, and more. These products include health insurance, car insurance, and energy. In 2015, the company signed a deal to secure

Bupa Bupa , legally British United Provident Association Limited, is an international health insurance and healthcare group with over 38 million customers worldwide. Bupa's origins and global headquarters are in the United Kingdom. Its main countrie ...

, one of Australia's largest health insurers, as a participating health fund. The deal ensured that Bupa products could be compared on comparethemarket.com.au, alongside products from health funds like ahm (owned by Medibank) and HBF Health Fund. Comparethemarket.com.au was the first commercial comparison website in Australia to disclose the amount of commission it receives from participating health funds. As of 2016, the standardised flat fee equated to a net present value of 27.75 percent of the first-year premium of the health insurance product sold by the company. Comparethemarket.com.au continues to compete against other comparison services in Australia, like iSelect and Choosi.

Meerkat Campaign

Compare the Market is perhaps best known for its marketing campaigns featuring meerkat characters Aleksandr Orlov and his Head of IT, Sergei. The meerkat advertisements started with Aleksandr Orlov's mission to clear the confusion up for Australians who mistook his website comparethemeerkat.com.au for comparethemarket.com.au. The same marketing campaign was launched years earlier in the United Kingdom for comparethemarket.com, which ended up topping a Nielsen consumer poll to be dubbed “UK’s most loved ad”. As of 2017, the UK business continues to use these characters in their own marketing. Another meerkat character, Baby Oleg, was introduced at the end of 2015. The storyline continued with Aleksandr Orlov buying the Compare the Market business, and introduced a human character named Tom. In 2017, the company launched a limited run of meerkat toys for their health insurance customers. Aleksandr's catchphrase, “simples”, is so well known that it can be found in both the Macmillan English dictionary, as well as the Oxford English Dictionary.

References

External links

*{{official website, https://www.comparethemarket.com.au/ Financial services companies established in 2012 Internet properties established in 2012 Companies based in Brisbane Comparison shopping websites 2012 establishments in Australia