Direct Line claims to be one of the UK’s most competitive car insurers, but not everyone agrees.

Even the report on which the insurer bases this claim says it would be most competitive for fewer than eighty out of 1000 hypothetical customers.

In other words, more than nine out of ten drivers would get a better price if they went elsewhere.

Of course, the quickest and easiest way to get a wide range of competitive quotes is through a price comparison site.

So it’s no wonder Direct Line is using its TV ads to try to convince people not to bother with these.

The more people that log on to the likes of Confused.com or Moneysupermarket.com, the fewer that will take cover from Direct Line.

I’m starting to sound like a broken record with my gripes about Halifax, but if they will keep bombarding my household with junk mail, what else can they expect?

This time it’s a personal loan and, apparently, there’s £13,000 “reserved and waiting” me.

Somehow I don’t think they really have put it aside in a pile with my name on it, but I’ll let that pass.

My real complaint is the interest rate: they are trumpeting the fact that it’s “just” 7.9 per cent.

They seem to be implying 7.9 per cent is some kind of bargain. Hardly.

I can go on the internet and get a loan from Moneyback Bank or Barclaycard at 6.3 per cent.

That may not sound like a huge saving, but if you were repaying £13,000 over five years, it would cost almost £600 more with Halifax.

Bizarrely, by going online I can get a rate of 6.9 per cent from Halifax themselves.

To add insult to injury, they want loan customers to take their repayment insurance.

But the leaflet doesn’t mention how much this might cost.

When I phoned the sales line to ask, I was told it was impossible to say as this was worked out individually.

So I went back online and made some calculations based on examples I found on Moneyfacts.co.uk which use Halifax’s own repayment cover rates.

It looks like it could add about £80 a month to that already inflated loan repayment.

No wonder they’re not keen to advertise the cost, as when I checked the price offered by independent provider Paymentcare.co.uk, it was around £10!

So will I be taking Halifax’s loan and repayment cover? Certainly not, and I hope no-one else does either.

More than a quarter of a million home insurance claims are turned down ever year because the claimants don’t have enough cover.

And as many as a quarter of the 40,000 or so householders hit by the recent floods may have no insurance at all – leaving them to foot repair bills running into thousands of pounds.

But even if you have policies to protect your home and belongings, if disaster strikes and you haven’t insured them for the right amount – or got the correct type of cover – you could be left badly out of pocket.

Prasad Shastri, head of insurance marketing at Abbey, warns: “An average of 257,000 home insurance claims are declined as a result of the policyholder not having the appropriate cover.”

If your insurer reckons you’re under covered, even if your claim is for only a fraction of your total sum insured, it will reduce its payout accordingly.

So it’s well worth spending some time adding up the value of your possessions – you may be surprised how much you’re worth.

If you need more cover, increase it.

And if you don’t have any, get some right away – economising on insurance could turn out to be a very costly mistake.

But make sure you read all the small print before you sign on the dotted line.

A cheap policy that doesn’t provide the protection you need isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Almost half-a-million mortgage payments have been missed in the past six months.

And that number looks likely to rise following the Bank of England’s latest interest rate rise.

According to research by MoneyExpert.com, around 77,000 payments are being missed every month – more than double last year’s figure.

With experts predicting at least one more rise before rates stabilise, things can only get worse.

If you do get into difficulties, don’t assume the state will bail you out.

Even if your problems are not of your own making – say, because you’ve lost your job or are too ill to work – government help with mortgage repayments is extremely limited.

That’s why it’s vital not to overstretch yourself when you take out a mortgage.

It’s also why you should have a savings cushion to protect you, and why you should consider taking out some form of income protection cover.

The Financial Services Authority has announced that it’s to start regulating the sale of travel cover by travel agents.

Unfortunately, it won’t take this unregulated area of insurance sales under its wing until 2009.

But it’s a step in the right direction.

Buying travel cover from the company that sold you your holiday is a sure fire way to waste cash.

Shop around and you could save as much as a couple of hundred pounds on your policy – without compromising on the quality of cover.

And it needn’t be time consuming or difficult.

Just type in some basic information and websites such as Moneysupermarket.com and Confused.com will scour the market for you in minutes.

Back in May, I wrote about the bizarre offer of “overdraft repayments cover” (sic) sent to my 84-year-old mother-in-law by Halifax’s insurance arm.

She has never had an overdraft in her life, is almost 20 years over the age limit stated in the ready completed application form’s small print and, as a pensioner, also breaks the policy’s “must be in paid employment” and “paying National Insurance” rules.

Yet Halifax was keen to charge her £93.60 a year to cover her non-existent debt.

When I phoned to find out what it was playing at, I was told its computer system reckoned she was only 43.

Very flattering, but simply not true.

So I wrote to complain – and this week received a reply including the utterly unhelpful and blindingly obvious admission that “this information appears to have been incorrect” plus a bunch of flowers for my mother-in-law.

What we didn’t get was any kind of explanation of how it could have happened – or a promise that it wouldn’t happen again.

Direct Line attacks the price comparison websites in its latest TV advert – but leading site Confused.com has hit back.

Direct Line wants to convince customers they won’t get such a good deal if they use these sites to shop for car insurance.

And it claims many don’t realise price comparison sites don’t list all possible policies and that they make money out of every one bought through them.

That may be so, but they still make consumers’ lives much easier by offering a one-stop shop where they can view a wide range of options and, by doing so, save large amounts of cash.

The system may not be perfect, but it’s far better than the alternative offered by Direct Line: buying direct from it.

Confused.com managing director Debbie Williams responds: ‘This looks like an act of desperation from an increasingly uncompetitive Direct Line.

‘It’s a shame it won’t allow its quotes to be compared through independent price comparison sites like Confused.com.

‘But there may be a reason – our initial research suggests that nine times out of ten of Direct Line’s quotes wouldn’t feature in our top five cheapest prices. And in some cases, Direct Line doesn’t even make the top ten.’

So who will I be going to in future for my insurance? As far as I’m concerned, the comparison sites win hands down.

Halifax/Bank of Scotland has just made my mother-in-law the (it would like to think) generous offer of what it calls ‘overdraft repayments (sic) cover’.

I’m still struggling to comprehend this latest bit of financial junk mail.

Will the banks ever run out of new ways to try to part us from our cash? It would be impressive if it wasn’t so horrifying.

Why on earth are they targeting an 84-year-old woman who has never been overdrawn in her life with this kind of overpriced, useless insurance that amounts to little more than scaremongering?

The less-than-detailed ‘eligibility details’ in tiny print on the front of the form, which they have so conveniently filled in on her behalf, state that you must be in paid work and making National Insurance contributions.

Well, as I said, she’s 84 - as the bank’s own records should clearly show. Does she sound eligible to you?

And to clear up any further doubt, the policy summary over the page states that you must be under 65. You do the maths.

Although of perfectly sound mind, she is easily confused by financial matters - as, again, the bank’s records giving me power of attorney will confirm - and would more than likely have signed and returned the form if I hadn’t intercepted it.

For £93.60 a year (assuming the bank�s insurance division had still failed to notice that she wasn’t eligible) she would have been covered in case she became unable to repay her non-existent overdraft.

No doubt they would have suddenly noticed she wasn’t eligible if she tried to make a claim.

When I phoned the HBOS insurance helpline number to point all this out, the explanation I received left me even more alarmed.

The reason they’d sent this mailing to my elderly mother-in-law? According to their records, she’s only 43. And why would that be? Because they’ve got her down as having my date of birth rather than her own.

The woman I spoke to admitted: ‘That’s obviously a big error on our behalf.’

She’s not wrong and I’ll be writing to complain - I’ll keep you posted about the response.

Nearly half of all homeowners are paying way over the odds for their buildings, contents and life cover because they choose their mortgage lender’s insurance.

The Post Office says more than eight million people are throwing away a combined total of £40 million every year because they buy their lender’s products instead of shopping around.

One in 10 do so because they think (wrongly) that it’s compulsory to buy home or life cover from mortgage provider, and one in 20 actually believe they might not get the mortgage they want if they don’t buy insurance too (wrong again).

But most people say they stick with their lender simply because it’s ‘convenient’.

£40 million is a high price pay for convenience, don’t you think?