Comparethemarket is a UK price comparison website, founded in 2006, that is part of the

BGL Group BGL Group (formerly Budget Group Limited) is a financial services company based in Orton Southgate, Peterborough, England. Its main lines of business are vehicle and home insurance, with a range of supplementary products such as breakdown c ...

. The website also offers other on-line companies the ability to provide their customers with a co-branded or white labelled comparison service. In 2009, the company launched an advertising campaign featuring a series of

meerkat MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope consisting of 64 antennas in the Meerkat National Park, in the Northern Cape of South Africa. In 2003, South Africa submitted an expression of interest to host the Square Ki ...

characters, after which it became the third-largest price comparison website in the UK.

History

The website was set up by Budget Group (now

) in early 2006, following a decision to sell its high street business to Swinton. In 2012, Comparethemarket.com.au launched its comparison service in Australia. The Australian company's television advertisements also feature the meerkat characters Aleksandr Orlov and his Head of IT, Sergei. However, these ads differ from the UK's, with one such storyline revealing the meerkats have purchased comparethemarket.com.au. In September 2017, it was announced the company was under investigation by the competition regulator surrounding allegations regarding most favoured nation clauses with home insurance providers.

Comparison products

Comparethemarket allows customers to compare prices on a number of insurance products including car, home, van, life, pet, travel and over 50s insurance. It has also expanded in to the comparison of items that can be switched such as energy/utilities, broadband and digital TV, as well as a range of financial products such as loans, credit cards, current accounts and mortgages.

Compare the Meerkat campaign

On 5 January 2009, the company launched an advertising campaign featuring a CGI

character named "Aleksandr Orlov" who pleads with viewers looking for cheap car insurance to stop confusing his meerkat comparison website ''comparethemeerkat.com'' with ''comparethemarket.com'', due to the similarity between the words ''meerkat'' and ''market''. As part of the campaign, Comparethemeerkat.com was created which does indeed allow visitors to compare meerkats, until its closure on November 18, 2023. On 26 November 2012, the website started sponsoring the long-running soap opera ''

Coronation Street ''Coronation Street'' is an English soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960. The programme centres around a cobbled, terraced street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner-city Salford. Orig ...

'' on ITV in a three-year deal, costing around £30 million.

Other adverts

In December 2012 another advert was launched this time featuring Maurice Wigglethorpe-Throom (played by Robert Webb) the founder of Compare the Market and his assistant Spencer who find out about Aleksandr (who makes a cameo appearance in a photograph) and Compare the Meerkat.

Controversy

In 2018, the BBC reported that the CMA found “most favoured nation” clauses in Comparethemarket's contracts with insurance companies which effectively banned them from selling their home insurance at cheaper prices on rival websites. The CMA chief executive, Andrea Coscelli, said: “Our investigation has provisionally found that Comparethemarket has broken the law by preventing home insurers from offering lower prices elsewhere. This could result in people paying higher premiums than they need to.” In November 2020 Comparethemarket was fined £17.9 million by the Competition and Markets Authority for breaking competition law as a result of their investigations.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://www.comparethemarket.com/
Meerkat Movies

BGL Group History

Result and review 2009 to 2010 - p11

Peterborough News "Meerkat mania was born in Peterborough"

Compare the Market Australian Site
Financial services companies established in 2008 Internet properties established in 2006 Companies based in Peterborough Comparison shopping websites 2006 establishments in the United Kingdom