Admiral, the car insurance company are a counting the success of their price comparison website Confused.com by announcing higher full-year profits.
Confused.com looks at 96 per cent of companies who offer car insurance on the Internet and compares their prices. In 2005 they generated over 4 million quotes, up from 1.37 million in 2004. This has helped to increase the sites profits to over £8.8 million.
Henry Engelhardt, Admiral’s founder and chief executive said, “It is a consumer champion. A great deal of its growth is coming from word of mouth, the most powerful form of advertising.”
For Admirals core element of business, car insurance, the Internet plays an important part as 82 per cent of all sales were from online quotes.
The insurance provider operates under the names of Admiral, Diamond, Elephant.co.uk and Bell Brands said pre-tax profits were up by almost £15 million to £119 million in 2005. Staff, as a result were awarded share bonuses of £3,000 each.
The insurer said it will pay a special dividend of 7.1p a share, saying it was expanding into Spain.
