Take care when using price comparison sites

Price comparison websites promise to give you the cheapest quotes from hundreds of insurers. But the FSA says these sites are not living up to expectations – and accuses them of not displaying information 'clearly, fairly and accurately'. Tim Bennett explains how best to use the sites.

Price comparison websites have really taken off in a big way. Consumer magazine Which? reckons that around 6.5m of us visited one of the largest three sites - moneysupermarket.com, gocompare.com and confused.com in April alone.

And small wonder. The sales pitch for comparison sites is simple and compelling. Why waste hours phoning round different insurance providers, when you can give your details to a website once and it will instantly find you the cheapest quote?

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.