The UK price comparison website and BGL Group brand, based in Peterborough, that helps people compare insurance, energy, broadband and money products.
Compare the Market is one of the UK's best-known price comparison websites. People use it to compare car, home, life, pet, travel, health, van, motorbike and business insurance, as well as broadband, mobile phones, energy, credit cards, loans, mortgages, car finance and savings accounts. Its own site says it compares 681 providers across 1,236 products and handles more than 38 million quotes a year. The service is free to use, and the company is paid by the providers when a customer buys, which it says means it only makes money when customers save.
The website launched in 2006 and belongs to BGL Group. BGL started in 1992 as Budget Insurance, a direct insurer founded by South African entrepreneur Douw Steyn, then moved into distribution and launched Comparethemarket.com in the mid-2000s. It became famous for its meerkat advertising character, Aleksandr Orlov, who began as a spoof campaign. In its own words, its purpose is to "make financial decision-making a breeze for everyone". The company does not publish a longer list of values on the page we could read.
The company's registered office and headquarters are at Pegasus House, Orton Southgate, Peterborough, which makes Peterborough the centre of its UK business. Wikipedia reported about 2,850 employees linked to the UK operation as at 2019, though that figure is dated. BGL Group is majority-owned by BHL, which also has businesses in Australia, South Africa and South East Asia, and the group also runs a French comparison site, LesFurets. In 2022 BGL sold its insurance underwriting business to Markerstudy and kept Compare the Market as its main business.
Compare the Market runs its Meerkat Rewards scheme, which offers customers discounts such as 2-for-1 cinema tickets, and says more than 26 million Meerkat Movies codes have been redeemed since 2015. It publishes pages on its community work, its environmental work, gender pay gap reporting and its Modern Slavery Act statement. It also has an in-house editorial team that writes guides on money and insurance, with named experts on its pages. These are the company's own descriptions, so ask staff what working there is really like.
A comparison business is a mix of technology and customer-focused roles. It needs software engineers and data scientists to build and run the comparison engine, people who work with the insurers and other providers on pricing and partnerships, marketing and brand teams behind the meerkats, customer service staff, writers and editors, and finance, risk and compliance specialists, because it is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. It also has a tool called AutoSergei that automates renewal quotes, which shows how much of the work is about technology.
Website: www.comparethemarket.com
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