Defaqto 2024 Winners: Best Rated Car, Home, Travel & Pet Insurers

Defaqto, the UK’s number one provider of financial product ratings, has announced the UK’s top providers for 2024/25 across the four major personal lines of insurance. The awards are aimed at helping UK consumers decide which brands are the best rated, on various key market metrics, plus compliance. Here are the details on this year’s winners;

Defaqto is trusted by millions of people to help them understand the features and levels of cover in insurance policies. The new annual Defaqto Insurance Awards will help even more consumers to make the smartest decisions about the products they choose.

Underscored by Defaqto’s independence, industry knowledge and expertise, over 90 brands have been rated using a unique methodology. This ranks them for product quality – assessed using one of the most extensive sets of GI policy data in the UK – and customer service, from surveying over 21k insurance customers.

For the first time, the top performers have been recognised as winners and highly commended.

Car Insurer of the Year 2024-25

Home Insurer of the Year 2024-25

Travel Insurer of the Year 2024-25

Pet Insurer of the Year 2024-25

To determine the winners, Defaqto has rated providers in more depth than the industry has ever seen before, with Insurance Awards criteria comprising:

1. The results of a customer experience survey – one of the largest ever surveys on UK insurance service provision with over 12k consumer respondents. The questions covered five key areas of service: Quote and Buy; Queries and adjustments; Claims; Renewals; and Complaints. The survey also examined overall satisfaction and recommendation.
2. Appeal of product features based on results of Defaqto’s annual Customer Appeal research amongst 9k consumers. This identifies the relative importance that customers place on product features.
3. Product ranking based on providers offering a range of good quality products, designed to appeal to a wide range of potential customers. This is informed by Defaqto’s financial product database – the largest in the UK – which underpins Defaqto Matrix 360. The ratings take account of the importance of product features, evidenced by Defaqto’s extensive 2024 Customer Appeal market research.

Winners ranked highly for both service and product, with an overall winner for each category and the three next best placed providers being highly commended.

John Milliken, Defaqto CEO, commented: “Congratulations to all the providers we are recognising in this year’s Awards – these businesses are setting the benchmark in terms of the best customer experience and strength of product offering. Underpinned by significant levels of research and insight, the Defaqto Insurance Awards will inspire consumer confidence and help people make smarter financial decisions when navigating the UK insurance market.”

Graeme Sands, Head of Personal Banking at Virgin Money said: “For Virgin Money to be named as best travel insurance provider by Defaqto is excellent news. In the last two years, we have helped in excess of 600,000 customers, and we have worked extremely hard to evolve and improve our travel insurance proposition ensuring that the various levels of protection are suitable for all types of customers going on holiday, ranging from a short break to trips around the world.”

Defaqto supports over 80% of the UK’s general insurance providers to optimise their market propositions. The business recently announced the launch of Defaqto Matrix 360 to aid providers with product development and compliance through new state-of-the-art technology and functionality spanning modelling, simulation, next best action, data visualisation, reporting and alerting. Matrix 360 will also incorporate Defaqto’s recently launched GI Customer Experience Insights dataset which reveals provider-by-provider the true experience of UK insurance customers.