The number of motor products quoting on price comparison sites has hit a record high, driven by a wave of launches that began with GIPP. Our latest analysis shows these newer, largely tiered propositions have held down prices in the top five positions by around 1.6%.
Price comparison sites have never been more crowded. More motor products are quoting now than at any point in our records, and the newest arrivals are already changing prices at the most competitive end of the market. To understand why, it helps to go back to the introduction of the FCA's pricing practices rules (GIPP).
A trend that started with GIPP
When GIPP came into force in January 2022, around 170 motor products were quoting on price comparison sites, up from 145 at the start of 2018. The rules banned price walking, which limited how far insurers could price renewing customers above equivalent new ones. Launching a new product became one way to compete for new customers without repricing an entire existing book.
Towards the end of GIPP's first year, launches surged. Thirteen new products arrived in October 2022 alone, and the total grew by a net 37 in the six months to March 2023. The count then drifted down through 2023 and 2024 as exits outpaced launches, reaching 198 by November 2024. The current wave began in 2025 and has accelerated this year. In the first seven months of 2026, 33 new products entered the market, taking the total to a record 221 in July, above the previous peak of 213 in 2023.
Many of these launches are tiered propositions, often offering lower levels of cover. One reading is that insurers use them to create a lower headline price that wins clicks on price comparison sites. Some insurers adopted this strategy early; others have come to it more recently.
As a result, almost a fifth of products quoting in July 2026 were less than a year old. In January 2025, products that had been quoting for three years or more made up around 90% of actively quoting products. By July 2026, that share had fallen to 72%, driven almost entirely by new entrants rather than exits.
Established books are losing competitive space
The market's oldest products have felt this influx most. Products quoting for four or more years still make up over half of all active products. Even so, they have lost around 10 percentage points of their share of rank 1–10 positions in a year. At rank 2, for example, their share fell from roughly 70% to 55%. In July 2025, these products were concentrated at the more favourable end of the table, and that advantage has since flattened. This is likely because GIPP puts more pressure on large, established books of business. Three-year-old products saw a smaller drop in the top ranks.
Most of that space has gone to products in their second year of trading. One-year-old products have more than doubled their share of rank 2, from 6.6% to 15.5%, and have a raised presence across ranks 2–7. Their presence dips at rank 1, which probably reflects competition from telematics propositions. Two-year-old products, meanwhile, show remarkable stability year on year. This suggests they have settled their pricing behaviour without having to move an existing book onto a GIPP-compliant strategy.
The very newest products take up surprisingly little competitive space so far. Their performance in positions 1–4 is inconsistent, and their pricing varies widely, with some raising rates and others cutting them. That is consistent with products still settling on a go-to-market strategy and finding their price point.
Measuring the suppression effect
To isolate the impact of newer products on market pricing, we built a price index and progressively removed younger products from it. We started with the full active market and ended with only products quoting for four or more years.
Across the whole market, the effect is small. At the competitive end, it is much larger. Among the top five positions, the full-market index finished July 2026 around 1.6% below the index for established products only.
The biggest single step comes at the two-year mark, where products have established their back-book strategy. The gap in top-five pricing opened from July 2025 and has persisted since.
What this means for the market
In many ways, the 1.6% suppression effect is a GIPP effect. New products arrive without a back book to protect, so they can price for new customers in a way established books increasingly cannot. The fact that the biggest step in the index comes at the two-year mark, once a product has settled its back-book strategy, supports that reading.
For consumers shopping around, this means prices at the competitive end are lower than they would otherwise be, because of the newer entrants. For established brands, it adds a second pressure alongside the constraints GIPP places on their existing books: the competitive positions they once dominated are increasingly occupied by younger products that don't carry the same legacy.
Headline market indices capture little of this, because the effect shows up in the top positions rather than across the market as a whole. Insurers benchmarking against overall market movement may therefore be underestimating the competitive pressure they face where most sales happen. With product counts at a record and launches still running ahead of exits, that pressure shows no sign of easing. The key question is what happens as the current wave matures and settles its back-book strategy. The stability of today's two-year-old products suggests the effect could become a lasting feature of the market.
Source: Consumer Intelligence Motor Daily Price Benchmarking. Product counts cover January 2018 to July 2026. The product age analysis is measured as at 31 July 2026 and includes only products that were actively quoting on that date.
Launching a new motor product?
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