Royal Bank builds its own glasshouse

UK insurance group Admiral has ended talks with private equity investors about the sale of a stake in its price comparison Website confused.com. Admiral says the potential suitors put a valuation on the business of up to £650 million. This compares to the roughly £1 billion valuation of rival site moneysupermarket.com ahead of its forthcoming IPO.

Interestingly, Tesco Personal Finance is thought to be gearing up to launch an online price comparison service in the autumn. Spokesman Matthew Dransfield confirmed to Finextra that the supermarket bank has registered the domain name tescocompare.com but refused to comment further.

Tesco Personal Finance is a joint venture between the UK supermarket chain and Royal Bank of Scotland. The Scottish banking group, via its insurance subsidiaries Direct Line and Churchill, has been a vociferous critic of the price comparison engines and has so far refused to allow its quote data to be used on such sites.

Will the bank change its tune with the launch of tescocompare? People in glasshouses and all that...