Answer Financial Expands Insurance Comparison Site Into Homeowners Segment

Answer Financial, a personal lines insurance agency in the U.S., has expanded its insurance comparison platform to include homeowners and condo insurance. The expansion enables shoppers to compare rates and customize coverages from multiple homeowner insurers online.

Answer represents several home insurance companies including Safeco, ASI, Mercury, MetLife, Pacific Specialty, Stillwater and Arrowhead.

Home and condo owners living in all 50 states can enter a zip code and home address and Answer’s insurance comparison engine instantly pre-populates its quoting sequence with property details gathered from publicly available records such as square footage and year built.

Shoppers can choose from basic, standard or premium insurance plans, or design a custom policy.

Shoppers who decide to purchase coverage may call at any time to do so over the phone with one of Answer’s insurance advisors. Answer employs 300 insurance agents.

Partner companies can offer homeowners insurance shopping as a complementary extension to their core products through partnership with Answer. Powered by Answer’s proprietary comparison technology, businesses can provide a co-branded insurance shopping experience from start to finish. Shoppers can compare rates and customer reviews from among the more than 20 insurers on Answer’s platform.

Answer, which already offers an online car insurance comparison platform, said it expanded into homeowners now because most people are now shopping online for insurance before making calls to purchase a plan. The company was also already offering home insurance comparison shopping through its U.S.-based call centers and said it wanted to expand its offering to customers who prefer to shop digitally.

Customers can bundle their home and auto policies by calling an insurance advisor at one of its call centers.

Answer Financial, through its agencies Insurance Answer Center and Right Answer Insurance, is an independent personal lines agency operation, providing auto and home insurance policies directly to consumers and through a network of marketing partners.

Answer Financial is a member of the Allstate family of companies, but does not sell Allstate products. Allstate products are sold exclusively by local Allstate agents. The company said Answer and Allstate serve different market segments.

Progressive Insurance also just launched a homeowners insurance online comparison tool called HomeQuote Explorer. ASI, which Progressive owns, also sells on Answer Financial.