Buying or renewing a policy is the main reason many people engage with the insurance market.

As intermediaries between providers and consumers, our members help them find the right product at the right price. We know that enabling consumers to switch easily between financial products encourages them to research and compare options, incentivising insurers to innovate to deliver value and choice.

But even minor switching requirements can prompt policyholders to stick with a policy when they could get a better deal. Insurance industry practices can often, if unintentionally, discourage switching, making the consumer journey more difficult than we believe it needs to be.

We want to ensure consumers feel confident to shop around and switch their insurance deal, empowered by good industry practices.

This is why we are encouraging insurance providers and their regulators to make it as easy for customers to cancel a policy and switch to a new one as to enter that policy in the first place.

Our ask

We are asking regulators and insurance providers to remove barriers to switching by:

• cutting bureaucracy, such as requiring customers to call their provider when they want to switch.

• ending renewal traps, practices that obscure how to prevent policy auto-renewal.

And we encourage them to:

• keep the application process simple, enabling potential customers, particularly those buying home insurance, to evaluate products without answering lengthy and complex sets of questions.

• use open data where possible, access existing customer information to shorten question sets for those taking out a new policy.

• make cancellation easy - simplify the consumer journey at cancellation.

We will play our part by continuously investing in innovation to deliver consumer value and choice.