The online retail giant is in discussions with European insurers for a U.K. price comparison website.
Amazon.com Inc. has entered into discussions with E.U. insurers in the hopes of forming an Amazon health insurance price comparison site for the United Kingdom.
This new site is in its earliest planning stages and official details have yet to be released.
A Reuters and Fortune report pointed to an Amazon health insurance price comparison website for consumers in the U.K. That said, neither stated whether or not there are any intentions to actually sell insurance products on the website. Moreover, neither report suggested that the launch date for such a website is anywhere in the near future.
Still, this only increases the number of steps the massive online marketplace is taking into the insurance space. The reports cited sources familiar with the matter but whose identities were kept anonymous.
The Amazon health insurance site so far consists of talks with some of Europe’s leading insurers.
The talks between Amazon and the health insurance companies remain at the foundation level. The e-commerce giant is still getting a feel for whether or not the insurers are interested in taking part in a price comparison site in the U.K.
There is a significant amount of potential for a site such as this one within the U.K. market. The United Kingdom’s price comparison market for health insurance plans is a very competitive one. There are already a few top players holding an important place in that area. They include GoCompare.com Group Plc and comparethemarket.com, among others.
Amazon declined the opportunity to comment on this development. That said, the company does already offer an Amazon Protect service. That offers accident insurance to provide protection for consumer products. GoCompare.com shares fell by as much as 10.2 percent upon the initial announcement of Amazon’s interest in its market.
An Amazon health insurance price comparison tool wouldn’t be much of a stretch for the company. It already has extensive price comparison services built into its website for the products it sells. Doing so for insurance policies would definitely take it into a new market, but it wouldn’t be substantially different from some of the other services it has already made available to consumers.
