For the past 12 years, we've been promoting the advantages of quoting on a proper panel rather than a single Insurer system, and today that seems more relevant than ever.

We're in a recession, which means that many clients who wouldn't normally claim for small losses, will now claim for absolutely anything. Insurers therefore change their rates more frequently to offset these increased costs.

This means that for any given client, the most competitive insurer last month is even less likely to still be the most competitive today.

Our 2008 insurer share, represented in the pie chart below shows an almost even split amongst our Household Insurers. As you can see, even the most competitive of our Insurers overall still commanded less than 20% of our total business... which means that they were actually not the most competitive in over 80% of cases.

If you only deal with a single insurer, then most of the time that insurer will not be best for your clients and also, you can't rebroke at renewal if their prices go up significantly.

It's easy to forget that insurance premiums are ultimately based on opinion... specifically the opinions of the actuaries who analyse vast amounts of data to work out a profitable rate for each risk. Actuaries rarely agree, and that is one of the reasons that no single insurer will ever be the most competitive for all clients in all areas.

The other main reason is that when Insurers change strategy, they don't all do it at the same time. They may price below acturial recommendations for a while to win extra business, but then they will reset their prices to boost profit.

If any Insurer was constantly the most competitive you would expect them to take a disproportionately large market share, but this doesn't happen.