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Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

I think this is great, and I'm very excited for Traff's project getting some wings -- but I am curious; aren't there already dozens of comparison/affiliate sites like this?

What about Leaky is so revolutionary and worthy of press?

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From the article.

"Most online price comparison tools for insurance are just lead generation for the various providers, so Leaky provides value with its unbiased comparison"

This. Mostly.

The idea of comparing insurance isn't new, but I felt that no one had done it well. Generally, either the results are biased because someone is trying to encourage you to pick one company over the other. Or when an agency is able to show you accurate, official prices - they are not able to show it for all of the largest companies, which results in an incomplete comparison.

With Leaky, we've set out to change that by being as impartial and transparent as possible - because we think that people deserve to be able to compare and manage their insurance the way they want to.

Can you explain how other comparison websites try to encourage you to pick one company over another without providing a benefit (i.e. cheaper price or better cover) to the customer?

Also, I understand that most comparison websites will not quote from every insurer and that there are now almost as many comparison websites as there are insurers. How will you be able to attract partnerships from more insurers than anyone else has done so far?

In a previous life, I worked with an online travel agent (you'll note I don't say for).

One of their major income streams was promoting certain providers in order to get more commission, so that if two providers had approximately similar inventory, then the one paying better commission typically gets placed at the top.

I understand how that happens when you're talking to a sales person - it's their job so they want to get the best commission they can.

A comparison website is just an algorithm. The deal at the top is the one with the cheapest quoted price. The price comes directly from the insurer so the comparison website has little control in which results are shown to the user. The only control they might have would be to remove low return insurers from their result set (in which case why partner with them at all?) or more likely present a high return result as a special or premium offer in which case they have to sell that to the customer on the basis of value for money.

Nope, in this case the algorithm was tuned to deliver the highest commission for them. It's a really, really stupid technique, and leads to poor conversion, but that aim of grasping for every bit you can get out of your local maximum is a difficult habit to break (and a worse one to codify in an algorithm).

We have a variety of these websites in the UK, such as gocompare, comparethemarket and moneysupermarket.

All of them list quotes ordered by price, from lowest to highest - and while some companies aren't listed, I have yet to find an unlisted company that offers a better price.

How does your product compare to these?

The whole point of a price comparison site is that it is unbiased. They show you several options and give you the information you need to decide which one to go for. Yes comparison websites act as lead generation but they make sense for both parties. The customer only needs to enter their details into a single place, while the insurers get leads from people who might have otherwise stopped their search after getting their third quote.

What does it mean to display 'unbiased' quotes to customers? I tried to visit Leaky's site but it appears to be down.

There are in fact only a few comparison sites in the U.S., but dozens of lead generation sites where you enter your details and then get calls from agents (often asking for the same details again). These sites are nearly worthless, as they only give you quotes from a few selected companies (usually the companies willing to pay for leads). None of them includes more than 2 or 3 of the top 5 carriers by price and customer satisfaction, based on J.D. Power surveys. That's why I built EZquo (http://ezquo.com). It's a simple website that lets you enter your details only once and get a private link that you can pass to any agent for a quote, saving you hours as well as your sanity.

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