Pontypool-based select comparison specialist Quote the Market is the IT power behind Honcho, the UK’s first reverse auction marketplace for financial services, who boast 14 insurers and 10,000 customers – offering them a better way to search for and buy motor insurance.
Quote the Market (QtM), part of insuretech industry leaders pH Innovate group, is helping Honcho offer the broadest range of insurers as an alternative to price comparison websites. Honcho aims to drive increased competition and pricing transparency through an auction, where insurers bid against each other in real time, with decreasing prices, to win people's business.
Every insurer pays £1 to enter an auction instead of price comparison website commission, which allows brokers/insurers to make pricing decisions based on risk and commercial factors, as they can see each other's pricing.
QtM provides an outsourced panel development, supplying a number of brands to the panel via Application Programming Interface (API) feed – saving Honcho both time and money.
QtM Managing Director Nigel Chivers said:
“We’re excited to add Honcho to our portfolio of customers who typically approach us with business issues and take our product, whether API or full white label, and report back that Quote the Market has delivered in a timely and cost-efficient manner.”
Honcho launched last autumn and was selected for the prestigious Tech Nation Fintech programme 2019, raising almost £900k through Crowdcube. Chief Executive Gavin Seawall said: “We’re delighted with the work Nigel and the QtM team has done for us – we’ll be using them again to facilitate the building of our van panel once we’ve finished with car. QtM has given us real value, and by delivering us a bigger panel, it has allowed us to focus on our main reverse auction delivery.”
Wales is home to over 3,500 home-grown and multinational technology operations, and south Wales is already world leading for its financial aggregator site technology. The nation is Europe’s centre for online insurance aggregators Innovative FTSE 100 insurer Admiral, and comparison sites GoCompare and Confused.com are based in Wales. Up and coming FinTech start-ups, such as Wealthify, Amplyfi and Vizolution are enjoying rapid growth, and tech giant Equiniti chose to open its FinTech innovation centre in Cardiff.
