Argos is entering the crowded personal finance comparison market with new site Argos Compare. The sector is currently dominated by industry leaders Moneysupermarket, Gocompare and ComparetheMarket.

Unique Selling Point: Vouchers for purchases

Despite the market being a largely homogonous mass of sites offering essentially the same service; Argos believes that it is unique in offering cash-back on purchases, in the form of Argos vouchers (somebody should tell them that Moneyexpert.com has been offering £25 cashback on all car insurance purchases for months.)

argoscompare.co.uk, is powered by BeatThatQuote and covers financial service products from car, home and travel insurance through mortgages, pensions and credit cards to utilities.

Customers will get £30 worth of Argos vouchers with every car insurance purchase and £15 worth of Argos vouchers on home insurance purchases when they use the service.

Greg Ball, MD of Argos Financial Services, believes that Argos can compete with the big players and has been quoted as saying

“The pure comparison sites have to continue to advertise, this means we will always offer better value to consumers and keep true to our brand proposition of ‘helping you live for less’.”

 Our thoughts

If cash back is your big motivator. I would go with Moneyexpert.com. I would rather have real cash in my pocket than cash tethered to purchases from the Argos catalogue.

The product is a white label offering from BeatThatQuote and so the overheads for Argos are low. They have good distribution of their message through their nationwide stores so they may not be looking to take a huge market share but this arrangement should work out to be a profitable one for them.