Moneysupermarket to flog its data

Moneysupermarket to flog its dataComparison site Moneysupermarket has hatched a plan to raise tens of millions of pounds in revenue by offering companies access to its aggregated customer data, which holds details on 21 million users.
According to the company’s latest financial results, released this week, revenue growth this year is expected to be driven partly by exploitation of the group’s data assets.
Chief executive Peter Plumb, who was managing director of DunnHumby before joining Moneysupermarket in 2008, said the company started selling motor insurance data a couple of years ago. It is now planning to expand the scheme by offering  home insurance data and looking to do the same in other areas of its business.
The firm expects to generate £10m from selling data this year alone, which, according to Plumb represents “a significant increase from where we are now”.
However, he emphasised the company is not selling information about individual customers. Instead it is offering trend data that has been aggregated from large numbers of transactions.
“I don’t think there’s any other business out there that has the breadth and depth of quote data that we have,” Plumb added.
Moneysupermarket is also starting to use its data to attract new customers and retain existing ones. It recently launched a product called Home Bill Checker, which allows people to see how much they can save on home insurance, energy and broadband by looking at the average quotes in their postcode.
Last month, the price comparison site hired Proximity London to handle its CRM strategy and has also recently recruited “ad visibility” specialist Meetricsis to address the increasing issue of online ads being served but never seen.
UPDATE: A Moneysupermarket spokesman says the company “will not allow anyone access to its database.  Nor will it be flogging customer data”. The spokesman said the firm “will provide market information derived from its database in an aggregated way so that market participants can understand where, for example, a new product priced at £x would sit in the market”. He added: “Be reassured Moneysupermarket would never sell customer data or anything like it.  It takes great pains to maintain the security of customer data.”

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  1. Moneysupermarket hatches plan to flog its customer data http://t.co/oe9bIXW5zO #data #directmarketing #digitalmarketing #advertising

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