Gocompare.com is a British financial services comparison website. The website enables people to compare prices on a variety of financial products, such as car insurance, home insurance, pet insurance, travel insurance, motorbike insurance, van insurance, mortgages and utilities.
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Gocompare.com was established in November 2006 and is based in Newport, Wales. The company's founder and chief executive officer is Hayley Parsons, who was formerly head of business development at Confused.com.[1]
Gocompare.com was the first comparison site to focus on features of insurance products rather than just listing prices.[2] This led to Gocompare.com being invited to become a member of the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA).[3]
In March 2009, Gocompare.com became the first price comparison site in the UK to compare over 100 different car insurance providers.[4]
Gocompare.com provides a comparison service for car, home, motorbike, van, and pet insurance and breakdown cover. Gocompare.com also provides comparison services for travel insurance, gas and electricity, broadband, loans, credit cards, mortgages and other financial products through preferred providers such as Energylinx and Experian.
The company won the 'One to Watch' category at the Fast Growth Business Awards 2008, with the judges complementing the management team for 'an extremely well-executed business with a clear USP and strong brand'.[5]
Hayley Parsons was winner of the 'Woman in Business' award at the South Wales Chamber of Commerce Business Awards 2009.[6] Parsons was also the winner of the Western Mail's 'Welsh Woman in Innovation Award' in 2008. In September 2009 Gocompare.com achieved the Investors in People award.[7]
Hayley Parsons won the 'Business Leader' category in the Inspire Wales Awards 2010[8] The awards, which are organised by the Institute of Welsh Affairs, recognise the role that Welsh residents play in encouraging active citizenship and in promoting their communities on a local, regional, national and global scale.
Hayley Parsons was awarded an OBE (appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the New Year's honours list in January 2012.
Traditionally, Gocompare.com's advertising focused on educating consumers about the benefits of using a comparison site. However, in June 2009, Gocompare.com launched an advertising campaign featuring a fictional Italian tenor called Gio Compario.[9] Gio Compario is played by Welsh tenor Wynne Evans. The song in the adverts is based on the George M. Cohan classic Over There and was voted as the most irritating advertisement of both 2009 and 2010.[10][11]
In September 2007 the company admitted that, on one occasion, an unlawful breach of privacy had taken place with regard to the passing on of data provided by customers. It said that this was the result of a breach of contract by a sub-contractor, Performance Direct, and stated that it would take immediate action to prevent it happening again.[12]
In January 2008 the site was blacklisted for a time by Google due to "irregular inbound links". This resulted in its share of search traffic for the term "car insurance" reducing from 17.49% to 2.31%.[13] Gocompare.com was blacklisted again in April 2009.[14]
GoCompare.com is currently the shorts sponsor of Welsh Football team Cardiff City.