FCA issues further insurance guidance

The Financial Conduct Authority has issued what it terms ‘finalised guidance’ for those selling general insurance products.

The new FCA guidance, issued in the past week, followed a separate market study into how general insurance firms charged their customers motor and home insurance. This market study focused on the impact and customer outcomes from firms’ pricing practices.

The finalised FCA document provides further clarity on the regulator’s expectations of firms operating in the “GI and pure protection sector”. In particular, how businesses should consider the value the “product and distribution arrangements present to the customer”.

The regulator added: “This guidance is part of a broader FCA focus on product value. While this guidance is aimed at addressing customer detriments specific to distribution chains, we expect firms to consider product value to the end customer (using the meaning of ‘value’ as described in the guidance) when applying the underlying rules in relation to all sales types, both direct and intermediated.

“It follows that we expect manufacturers to consider product value to their end customer regardless of the type of distribution strategy they use.

“The absence of guidance specific to direct sales by manufacturers, does not preclude the FCA from considering enforcing against our current rules where poor practice leading to customer detriment is detected.”

eBay, Gumtree and Motors.co.uk combine as eBay Motors Group

Three notable online automotive classified advertising names are relaunching as a single group under one brand. The newly formed eBay Motors Group will see eBay Motors, Gumtree Motors and Motors.co.uk pool resources to offer retailers a single point of contact as of January 2020.

The new group has been formed nine months after Motors.co.uk was acquired by eBay Motors and retailers will now be able to go to one place to manage their adverts and for invoicing.

Currently eBay Motors and Gumtree users have rolling contracts while motors.co.uk have perpetual contracts. When the respective deals come to an end, they will all be encouraged to come under the same umbrella. While the overall cost will be slightly higher, the group has confirmed there will be initial deals on offer to encourage customers of one platform to upgrade their involvement.

Consumers will not see a difference from the outside as they won’t engage with the ebay Motors Group – the company believes that the three sites offer a sufficiently different experience and will be left unchanged from the user’s point of view.