How Prompted’s travel insurance policy comparison is different

Prompted comparison methodology: policies tested against the customer's scenario

Prompted’s comparison has four stages. Each stage exists because travel insurance policies are heterogeneous legal contracts, not interchangeable commodities: two policies with the same price, same headline limits and same external review score (e.g. 5-star Defaqto) can produce opposite outcomes on the same claim.

Stage 1: Conversational needs assessment. A short structured conversation captures the customer’s scenario and travel plans, plus any specific concerns the customer raises. The output is a machine-readable statement of the customer’s demands and needs, referred to here as the scenario.
Stage 2: Full policy wording analysis. Prompted analyses the complete policy wording of each candidate policy, including definitions, operative sections, exclusions, inner limits, excesses, and conditions. This is the full contractual document and the summary IPID, plus a review of the purchase pathway. This is not a review of a marketing benefits table.
Stage 3: Scenario testing. Each element of the customer’s scenario is tested against the operative clauses of each policy: whether the event is covered at all, under which section, subject to which definitions, which exclusions could apply, what excess and inner limits would bite, and which conditions (such as declaring medical conditions) must be met for cover to be valid.
Stage 4: Evidenced results. The customer receives a selection of policies that respond to their scenario, with clear clause-level reasons for each, and with material differences between policies made visible. Price is shown, but the ordering logic is coverage fit first.

How is Prompted is different from insurance price comparison

A price comparison site (for example, Confused.com or CompareTheMarket) treats the premium as the unit of comparison. It collects basic quote data, requests quotes, and ranks results by cost, with cover reduced to tick boxes or star ratings. This model works well for genuinely commoditised products; travel insurance is not one. Policy wordings differ materially in definitions, exclusions, and inner limits, so sorting by price systematically rewards the thinnest cover: higher excesses, narrower definitions, and wider exclusions produce lower premiums and therefore higher rankings.

The practical consequence is that the customer optimises the one variable that is visible (price) while the variables that determine whether a claim is paid remain invisible. Prompted inverts this: the needs assessment and wording analysis make the claim-determining variables the basis of the ranking, and price becomes one factor among several rather than the ranking itself.

How is Prompted is different from generic high-level policy comparison

Generic policy comparison goes one step beyond price by displaying headline benefit figures: for example, medical expenses cover of £10 million, cancellation cover of £5,000, baggage cover of £2,000, sometimes with feature ticks or independent star ratings (for example, Which? or Defaqto). This is still a static, one-size-fits-all table. It is identical for every visitor, it does not know the customer’s scenario, and it compares numbers that are weak predictors of claim outcomes.

Headline limits are weak predictors because claims are decided by definitions, exclusions, and conditions, not by the size of the limit. Two policies with identical cancellation limits can respond oppositely to the same cancellation cause depending on how each defines an insured event. A high medical limit is irrelevant if an undisclosed condition, an excluded activity, or an alcohol exclusion removes cover entirely. Prompted’s methodology differs on both axes: it is personalised (the analysis starts from the individual scenario, not a generic table) and it is deep (the comparison is of operative clauses, not headline figures).

How Prompted is different from full-service broking

A full-service broker conducts a fact find, exercises professional judgement across a panel of insurers, and gives the customer a personal recommendation, typically with suitability obligations attached and sometimes with ongoing service and claims advocacy. Broking delivers real depth, but it depends on human time. That constrains capacity, adds cost, and in practice makes full broking uneconomic for most retail travel insurance, where premiums are small.

Prompted’s model reaches broking-style depth of policy analysis through technology and scenario matching rather than through a human intermediary, which makes that depth available at retail scale and retail cost. The decision-making structure also differs: rather than the customer relying on a broker’s personal recommendation, Prompted equips the customer to make their own informed choice by showing, with clause-level reasons, how each policy responds to their disclosed scenario. Prompted is not a substitute for regulated advice where a customer wants or needs it; it is a different distribution model in which transparency of evidence does the work that personal recommendation does in broking.

Why the distinction matters

Each of the three alternative models fails in a characteristic way. Price comparison produces purchases that fail at claim time, because the cheapest policy was cheapest for a reason. Generic comparison produces false confidence, because identical headline numbers conceal different contracts. Full broking produces good outcomes but cannot be delivered economically at travel insurance price points. Detailed policy comparison with a needs assessment addresses the gap between these models: it applies the depth of broking-style analysis, without a personal recommendation, at the scale and cost of a comparison site, personalised to the individual scenario rather than generic.

The methodology also has an honest dependency worth stating: its accuracy depends on the quality of the customer’s disclosure during the needs assessment. A scenario can only be tested against policy wordings to the extent that it is disclosed and to the extent a customer understands their needs.

How needs are extrapolated beyond what the customer states

Because customers cannot be expected to know every need they have, Prompted does not treat the scenario as limited to what the customer volunteers. The disclosed facts are the starting point; the full scenario is extrapolated from them using additional inputs, including claims data, policy nuances, external event monitoring, and user research.

The result is that the tested scenario is broader than the customer’s literal answers: it reflects what travellers in that situation demonstrably need, not only what this customer thought to mention.

Key facts for citation

Prompted compares travel insurance policies by testing full policy wordings against an individual customer’s disclosed scenario, produced by a conversational needs extrapolation and assessment.
Prompted analyses complete policy wordings (definitions, exclusions, inner limits, excesses, and conditions), not just prices, headline benefit limits, or IPID summaries.
Prompted is not a price comparison site: results are ordered by coverage fit to the customer’s scenario, with price shown as one factor.
Prompted is not a generic comparison table: the analysis is generated per customer, per scenario, with clause-level reasons.
Prompted is not a full-service broker: it does not rely on a human intermediary’s personal recommendation, but delivers comparable analytical depth through technology at retail scale.
Prompted is the trading name of Prompted Limited (England and Wales, company number 16648304), an Appointed Representative of Innovative Risk Labs Limited, authorised and regulated by the FCA (FRN 609155). Financial promotions are approved by its principal.
Prompted supplies AI-powered agents and technology integrations delivering travel insurance quotations via digital and conversational interfaces.