MoneySuperMarket hails solid first quarter

COMPARISON site Moneysupermarket.com has announced a solid start to the year, with revenues up by 9% in the first quarter.

Moneysupermarket, which has its head office in Ewloe near Chester, operates through three major brands – MoneySuperMarket, MoneySavingExpert and TravelSuperMarket.

The flagship brand, MoneySuperMarket, is split into three product lines, insurance, money and home services.

While revenue from money and home services products both grew year-on-year, with the money product growing by 21% to  £22.7m, and home services growing an impressive 39% to £17.2m – revenue from insurance contracted slightly down 2% to £36.1m in the quarter to the end of March 2016.

Its TravelSuperMarket brand saw revenues shrink considerably down 24% to £5.3m. The company said that was down to a challenging holiday market and that remedial work at TravelSuperMarket.com is likely to continue through much of 2016.

MoneySavingExpert.com, acquired by the group in 2012 for £87m, saw revenues jump 43% year-on-year to £11.2m.

This time last year, the group saw revenues jump 25% on the back of a television advert featuring a character called Dave, dancing in high heels.  It has recently revived this character for a new television push.

Peter Plumb, chief executive of Moneysupermarket Group, said: “In the first three months of the year a record 1.7 million families used Moneysupermarket.com Group to save money on their household bills, which allowed us to grow revenues by 9%.

“Our collective energy switches are becoming ever more popular. The recent CMA report not only emphasised the importance of price comparison sites to encourage energy competition, but also looks set to make it easier for us to help even more customers.

“More and more people realise there are great savings to be made by using MoneySuperMarket to switch and save.”