Showing posts with label wide MFN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wide MFN. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

CMA finalises changes for car insurance

Press Release, here.

288-page Final Report here.

Et voilà: "The measures include a ban on agreements between price comparison websites and insurers which stop insurers from making their products available more cheaply on other online platforms"

Thursday, June 12, 2014

CMA proposes ban on "wide" retail price MFN between price comparison websites and insurers in the private motor insurance market (and ban on "narrow" MFN if "equivalent behaviour")

Provisional decision on remedies here.

See also Appendices 4.1 (Single-homing and the threat of delisting), 4.2 (Extending the remedy to narrow MFNs), and 4.3 (Effectiveness of advertising expenditure on PCWs), here.

Remedy proposed (para 4.71):

(a) A prohibition on PCWs and PMI providers entering into or performing agreements that include an MFN relating to the sale of PMI, except narrow MFNs, where ‘narrow MFNs’ are defined as covering the insurance provider website but excluding possible aggregator platforms.
(b) A prohibition on behaviours which have as their effect the elimination or reduction of competition between PCWs in a similar way to the harm identified by wide MFNs (namely, restricting entry to the PCW market, reducing innovation by PCWs and increasing premiums for motor insurance to the retail customer). This measure will apply to those PCWs which generate more than 300,000 PMI sales per year [this would mean that narrow MFNs which have the same anticompetitive effects as wide MFNs are also prohibited, SV ]
(c) PMI providers and PCWs will be required to comply with immediate effect following the making of the order.
(d) In order to monitor equivalent behaviours, those PCWs above the 300,000 PMI sales per year threshold will be required to submit compliance statements to the CMA every quarter for the first two years following the order and then once a year. These compliance statements would need to list all delisting actions during the relevant period, setting out the reasons for the delisting.