Price Comparison Websites Biased

Price Comparison Websites Biased.

At last, the financial services industry regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has confirmed it is to investigate price comparison websites to establish whether they are unfairly promoting certain deals above others.

Price Comparison Websites are not free, they get paid a commission by financial companies for introducing consumers to their products.

This is known as an affiliate marketing deal.  In very simple terms, you click through to a credit card or cash ISA rate and the comparison website may

1. Get paid for the “click through” – known as pay per click
2. Get paid an introducers commission if you apply for said credit card or bank account
3. Get paid for both

Comment

We have long campaigned that clients are not always getting the best deal and it seems one rule for financial advisers that must justify why they have recommended a particular product or service and another rule where some comparison websites, but not all, blatantly have ‘special highlighted’ firms at the top of the search results.

We have no problem if this is the case, but it should be highlighted if the website is getting paid either via an introducers commission or being paid as a top of the page advertisement.

Price comparison websites also featured as part of our video series “The Five Deadly Money Mistakes” people make.