Tesco offers the cheapest average insurance premiums out of the four main supermarkets, while Marks & Spencer works out most expensive by some margin.
In the latest instalment of our Supermarket Finance Wars, aimed at finding which store offers the best value financial products, we obtained car and home insurance quotes and pitted them against each other.
While Tesco was comfortably cheapest (by a margin of over £100), there was little to choose between Sainsbury’s and ASDA’s offerings. As for M&S, the less said about them the better.
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Supermarket sweep: the best and the worst
| Supermarket insurance overall | Total Premium |
| Tesco | £752 |
| Sainsbury's Bank | £865 |
| ASDA | £882 |
| Marks & Spencer | £1094 |
Every little helps… for Mr Average
All insurers have a specific type of customer they want to attract and tend to reserve their cheapest deals for that particular demographic, so individual circumstances can affect the cost of cover each provider will offer.
In order to be as fair as possible to the various insurers, we provided the details of Britain’s Mr Average for each application.
According to the Office of National Statistics, Mr Average is a 39-year old, who is still paying off the mortgage on a house worth £184,000 and drives a Ford Focus with an average annual mileage of less than 6,000. Here’s what we found.
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Despite only coming in second overall. Sainsbury’s Bank actually offered the cheapest cover for our Ford Focus, with annual premiums of £480. Tesco car insurance was next in line at £554, and was the only other supermarket to offer a competitive quote.
ASDA was a distant third with a quote of £765, while Marks & Spencer was stone last with an eye-watering annual premium of £910 – nearly twice that of Sainsbury’s. It’s worth mentioning that M&S offers breakdown insurance free with its policy, but considering this is only worth between around £90 it means it is still the worst deal.
So how do the supermarkets compare to the specialist insurers? An identical policy at Switftcover is available for £427, or £53 cheaper than Sainsbury’s best offer, while Churchill car cover charges £552 and More Than car cover is £571 a year.
So while the specialists are cheaper, it’s clear the supermarkets aren’t far off.
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The best supermarket home insurer was...
ASDA was by far the cheapest in this department, with its contents insurance costing an impressive £117, while M&S and Tesco were closely priced on £183 and £197 respectively.
Sainsbury’s went from being comfortably cheapest on car cover to the most expensive for home insurance, charging a whopping £384 for its cover - more than three times the price of ASDA.
Sainsbury’s aside, the supermarkets’ premiums are actually really competitive. In fact, they are actually cheaper than many of the specialist insurers. Of those we checked, Churchill home insurance was the cheapest at £177, followed by Privilege on £219 and Hiscox home insurance at £315.
| Supermarket home insurance | Annual Premium |
| ASDA | £117.27 |
| Marks & Spencer | £183.53 |
| Tesco | £197.60 |
| Sainsbury's Bank | £384.39 |
| Specialist home insurance | Annual Premium |
| Churchill | £177.45 |
| Privilege | £219.45 |
| Hiscox | £315.00 |
Insurance waters are murky
In our previous articles on supermarket saving accounts and personal loans, it was easy to point out where the best and worst deal lay. The problem with insurance is its extremely difficult to compare like for like, as the deal you are offered will depend greatly on your individual circumstances.
For example, we again applied for car insurance cover at Tesco and ASDA, but this time provided the details of a 25 year old housewife living elsewhere in London. Remember that Tesco was over £200 cheaper in our first example, but this time it was ASDA that was cheaper with a £928 premium, while Tesco cost a hefty £1,296.
So while this article serves as a good indicator for the “average” applicant, its essential you always shop around for your insurance policies. It may be a hassle, by if you simply choose the first one you come across you could be paying up to three times more than necessary.
One final point to mention; you should never simply renew a policy, no matter how cheap it was when you first signed up. This is because insurers always save their best deals for new customers (that’s why it was so cheap when you first signed up) and plump up their profits on existing ones.
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