In September last year, Moonstone reported that OUTsurance was unhappy after Hippo flighted an advertisement that apparently parodied the insurer’s “Saver” advert.
OUTsurance said the advert was an infringement of its brand properties, was misleading, and placed the industry in a poor light. The High Court in Pretoria dismissed an urgent application by OUTsurance for Hippo to stop showing the ad.
Hippo said the point of the advert was to “educate” South Africans about the benefits of comparing quotes before committing to an insurer.
Read: Court dismisses OUTsurance bid to pull Hippo ‘parody’ advert
Now, Hippo has taken exception to an advert posted on Facebook by competing insurance aggregator Everything.Insure.
The advert, which was posted in March, directly compares the two companies.
Hippo says the content is defamatory and misleading. Everything.Insure says the post is part of a consumer education campaign.
Hippo brought an urgent application before the High Court in Durban on 6 April, the day before the Easter long weekend, seeking to have the Facebook reel (video) taken down. The court struck the matter from the urgent roll, and costs were awarded against Hippo for failing to make a case for urgency. But the substance of the case has yet to be decided.
Hippo, which has dominated the insurance aggregator market for more than a decade, is owned by Telesure Investment Holdings, which also owns short-term insurers such as 1st For Women, Auto & General, Budget Insurance, and Dial Direct.
Relative newcomer Everything.Insure is owned by First Equity Insurance Group.
What Everything.Insure asserts
The reel begins with Everything.Insure chief executive Mishaya Chettiar saying that Hippo has done “a really great job” over the past 17 years of giving consumers multiple quotes “from within the Telesure group, and recently they’ve extended that to a few insurers outside of the group”.
Hippo has taken issue with the assertion that its quotations include only a small number of non-Telesure insurers.
Chettiar goes on to say that Hippo provides only “indicative” quotes. Consumers will be provided with the actual price only after answering a series of questions put to them by a call centre agent. Chettiar claims consumers might find that the actual price is “30% to 40%” more than the price they saw on-screen.
She says Everything.Insure provides “multiple” comparative quotes from different insurers, and the price consumers see on-screen is the price “you can actually buy and bind with then and there”.
Chettiar says consumers who use Everything.Insure do not have to deal with each insurer independently.
“With Everything.Insure, you have all your insurance products, regardless of your insurer, in one platform where you can claim, edit, or do whatever you want to do with your insurance product in one place without having to go to each insurer’s platform or call the insurer directly.”
‘Comparisons must be factually accurate’
Ashley Smart, the chief executive of Hippo, said the company “loves a good comparison. In fact, that’s what our business is all about. However, the comparison must be factually accurate so that the public is not misled.”
In a media release, Chettiar said that after receiving notice of a legal complaint from Hippo, Everything.Insure, without admitting “wrongfulness”, archived the post for a few days and invited Hippo to clarify the elements of the post with which it had problems.
After Hippo declined to provide further details, Everything.Insure unarchived the video, Chettiar said. On 31 March, after the post had been online for 12 days, Hippo approached the High Court.
Everything.Insure denied that the reel is defamatory or misleading. It said the post was part of a social media series to educate consumers about the insurance industry, including the differences between Everything.Insure and other insurtechs and traditional insurance brokers.
“Our intent was never to attack Hippo, or any of the other brands included in our series of posts,” Chettiar said, adding the goal was to enable consumers to make informed decisions.
She said the post was “based on market research, real-world case studies, and an analysis of Hippo’s processes”.
