Aviva home, car and travel insurance - Cover by Britain’s largest insurer

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

As even the most disinterested consumer knows from a mammoth advertising campaign Aviva have re-branded. Norwich Union is going to be a footnote in history as the new global brand marches forward.

On the home insurance front they now present themselves as ‘the UK’s most popular home insurance company’. If they carry on offering £50,000 of free contents insurance when you get your buildings insurance direct from Aviva they may well be.

In the past such ‘free’ offers from the insurance industry have got themselves a faintly unsavoury reputation – since in reality you pay for your contents cover within the buildings cost, or with a huge excess. Happily the razor sharp competition in the insurance industry has all but ironed this practice out.

Within the car insurance offering the usual ‘mystery shopper’ type example of how Person X found insuring Car Y £100 cheaper with Aviva gets star billing. Unfortunately, the dizzying number of variables within every car quote make these less useful than they at first seem.

On the other hand their travel insurance section has an extremely useful facility – the ‘quick quote’. Broadly speaking it asks you how many days you are away for and how old you are – then gives you a quote! There’s a whole list of assumptions they’ve made to enable this facility, but basically it’s a great gimmick. In a few seconds you can get a reasonably clear idea of what you are going to look at paying for your travel insurance.

The overall impression of the re-branded offering is similarly good. Aviva is a massive company prepared to offer very good deals in return for an appropriately massive slice of the market. Despite what their critics say about the demise of an old name like Norwich Union, it might just work.

Looking for travel insurance? Try the leading insurer for over 50s - Saga Travel Insurance.

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