Some of the UK’s largest insurance companies have agreed to limit price sharing through a service from data provider Experian, after the Office of Fair Trading raised fears it might limit competition.
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The OFT had felt Experian’s Whatif? Private Motor gave competing companies too much specific information about one another’s current and future car insurance pricing models, and therefore opened the possibility for price fixing.
Aviva, Axa Insurance UK and RBS Insurance Group were among the seven companies that agreed to change the way they used the service. In future, they agreed, all pricing data will be anonymised, aggregated across multiple insurance providers and would only relate to policies that are already on the market.
According to a report for the Society for Computers and Law, the agreement could have far reaching consequences for similar market data sharing services.
