Direct Line to target price comparison sites with Darwin launch - Insurance Post (original) (raw)

Direct Line will launch a business called Darwin in the next quarter focused exclusively on sales from price comparison sites.

The insurer said Darwin will use a radically different pricing model than the rest of the group, and would be a test bed for new ideas.

The business will launch in Q2 and will make heavy use of machine-learning and big data, said incoming CEO Penny James.

“It’s very exciting, a bit like doing a start-up business,” she told Post. “All of our other brands currently use the same pricing model. For Darwin we have a new risk-based pricing model with machine learning.

“It lets us test some new processes and techniques. If they are effective we can decide what we roll into the bigger and broader brand.”

James said the insurer had been testing the model on historic customer data sets held by Direct Line, and identifying different groups of customers with different criteria that are more profitable than those identified by the existing pricing model.

The launch comes amid a Financial Conduct Authority investigation into insurer transparency in pricing models.

Outgoing CEO Paul Geddes said that although he felt the market was working well currently, if there was complete market change as a result of the review, the group was well placed to adapt.

“If the market goes to an entirely different pricing model, we are confident we have the assets to make a success of it,” he said.