Insurance comparison website Hippo loses first leg of court battle against new kid on the block

A relatively new entrant to the insurance market, Everything.Insure is making a name for itself by criticising competitors. The popular insurance aggregator Hippo, which is owned by the Telesure group, has called out the new kid on the block with a court case for defamation. Hippo has lost the first leg of the legal battle, with its application for an urgent hearing turned down, but the substantive issues are still to be adjudicated.

In a paid-for social media post doing the rounds on Facebook, Everything.Insure’s chief executive, Mishaya Chettiar, publicly alleged that Hippo is reeling consumers in with premiums that could be 30% to 40% higher on take-up of the insurance offer. 

Hippo, which has dominated the insurance aggregator market for more than a decade with its popular insurance comparison website www.hippo.co.za, has had relatively little competition over the years.

Although the Durban High Court found in favour of Everything.Insure, ruling against Hippo’s urgent application to have the post taken down, it does sail close to the wind when it comes to comparative advertising rules. 

Chettiar maintains that the contentious post is merely a “consumer education post”, and the company has launched a social media campaign which it is punting as a “social media series educating consumers on the insurance industry, including posts about the differences between Everything.Insure, other insurtechs and traditional insurance broking models”. 

In the Facebook post that Hippo wanted to be taken down, Chettiar says, “Today, we are going to be looking at EI (Everything.Insure) vs Hippo.” 

Her explanation in a media release on Monday is that the main differences highlighted in the post were that Everything.Insure is an independent company providing multiple, comparative quotes from top insurers in the market, while Hippo is a lead generator owned by Telesure Investment Holdings, which also owns many of the insurers putting quotes on Hippo’s platform, including 1st For Women, Auto & General, Budget Insurance, Virseker and Dial Direct. 

Everything.Insure claims to work with “top insurers” but does not name any of the insurers it works with on its website, although Chettiar does name Hollard as a partner on her LinkedIn page. 

Chettiar also had no insurance experience before joining Everything.Insure five years ago as per her LinkedIn profile. However, in the space of five years, her career has progressed from “digital transformation and innovation consultant” straight to “executive head”. Her very first LinkedIn post was just nine months ago.

Everything.Insure is owned by the First Equity Insurance group. Vis Govender is chief executive at First Equity and group chief executive and founder of Everything.Insure. 

Chettiar says that after receiving notice of a legal complaint from Hippo, Everything.Insure, with no admission of “wrongfulness”, temporarily archived the post and invited Hippo to provide clarity regarding the elements of the post it had problems with. 

After Hippo declined to provide further details, Everything.Insure unarchived the video on its platforms and said it has now received more than 130,000 views. On 31 March, after 12 days of the post being online, Hippo launched a legal complaint at the high court alleging that the post was defamatory and misleading. 

“Everything.Insure’s social media post was prepared after it conducted market research and it denies that the post is either defamatory or misleading in any way. In fact, the post was launched as a part of an educational series aimed at answering consumers’ frequently asked questions and empowering them with greater knowledge of the insurance industry,” Chettiar says. 

The application came before the Durban High Court on Thursday, 6 April, and was struck from the urgent court roll by Judge Chetty, who awarded an adverse costs order against Hippo for failing to make out a case of urgency. 

“We were surprised when, after declining to provide details regarding their concerns, Hippo’s legal team suddenly approached the high court for urgent relief the day before the Easter weekend.” 

Additionally, Everything.Insure’s post explains that as Hippo is part of the Telesure Investment Holdings Group, it only includes a small number of insurers from outside its own stable — another point that Hippo has raised as the basis for its concern. 

Ashley Smart, the chief executive of Hippo, says the company “loves a good comparison. In fact, that’s what our business is all about.” However, he adds that the comparison should be factually accurate so that the public is not misled.  

“This is the point we wanted to make, at first amicably, and then through the courts. Whilst the urgency was dismissed, the merits of the case will be heard at a later date,” he says. DM/BM