Tracking what 180,000 real consumers spend on general insurance

Each year, UK personal lines insurers post their annual financial reports, regularly – to the pleasure of their stakeholders – revealing billions of pounds in insured sums and hundreds of millions of pounds of gross written premium (GWP).

The sum total of these figures can be eyewatering. Indeed, according to a January report from GlobalData, GWP in the UK consumer market stood at £42.82bn in 2024.

But the focus on balance sheets and profit signalling can sometimes distract from a fundamental question – where is the money coming from?

To answer this question, Insurance Times has investigated the real spending patterns of nearly 180,000 current and credit accounts of UK consumers, with the help of consumer insights firm SpendMapper.

Lauren Ambrose, business development director at SpendMapper, explained: “SpendMapper gives insurers a live, behavioural view of the market that traditional data simply can’t offer. 

”By analysing over £100bn of real-time consumer spending, it shows where customers actually spend their money, how that behaviour is shifting week by week and which brands are winning or losing share.”

The data provided represents the last 12 months of financial transactions of a cohort of 178,000 real consumers. Of them, 76.5% (137,000) made at least one general insurance transaction. This amounted to 2.3m transactions in the period, at a total value of £138.6m.

Average Joe

So, what does the data tell us about the average general insurance customer? Meet insurance’s Average Joe.

Average Joe is 42.3 years old and earns £36,200 per year. For a regular taxpayer – with no student loan payments and making minimum default retirement contributions – that equates to a yearly post-tax income of £28,600.

Of that net income, some £1,013 (3.54%) is spent on general insurance products. This total is reached via 16.61 yearly transactions at an average of £60.97, suggesting that many consumers are buying multiple products and purchasing some of these products on a monthly basis.

Nearly one third (29.8%) of consumers had at least one transaction with five major personal lines insurers, dominated by home and motor cover providers – Admiral Insurance, Hastings Direct, Domestic and General, Coverwise and 1st Central.

Explaining why data down to the granularity of a single individual can be so valuable, Ambrose said: “For insurance firms, this insight is particularly powerful in understanding churn and switching behaviour.

“SpendMapper can identify when customers stop paying premiums altogether versus when they switch to a competitor, helping insurers distinguish between lapses, affordability pressures and genuine competitive losses. That enables more targeted retention strategies, sharper pricing decisions and better-timed customer interventions.

“Beyond individual portfolios, SpendMapper supports a macro view of market dynamics. Insurers use it to track the impact of the cost of living environment on household budgets, monitor growth or contraction across key spending categories and stress-test assumptions about customer resilience.”

Payment schedules

The most common transaction amount was in the £25 to £50 range, with 26% of all transactions falling into the bucket, followed closely by the £1 to £25 range, which saw 20% of transactions, and the £50 to £75 range, which saw 16%.

According to the ABI, average yearly motor premiums in the third quarter of 2025 stood at £551, with combined buildings and contents cover at £391.

Paid monthly, these would equate to transactions of £45.9 and £32.6 respectively, likely contributing to the high volume of small transactions. Smaller one-off or yearly payments, such as travel or gadget cover, also commonly fall in the sub-£75 range.

A proportion of transactions were also seen in higher value ranges, suggesting many consumers pay their premiums in cheaper, yearly instalments. Some 6% of transactions fell into the £200 to £300 range, 5% into the £300 to £500 range and 4% were valued at over £500.

It is important to note that one consumer paying monthly will register 12 times as many transactions as one consumer paying yearly, so the proportion of transactions in each bucket does not correspond directly to the raw count of consumers using those payment mechanisms.

Aging demographic

The data also provided insights on the age range of general insurance customers, revealing that consumers tend to engage more with insurance products as they grow older.

Despite accounting for 12% of the national population, consumers aged 18 to 24 years old accounted for just 8% of insurance transactions, highlighting a lack of engagement in products outside of motor cover.

Likewise, 25 to 34 year olds – who make up 17% of the population – accounted for 16% of insurance transactions, indicating a small level of disengagement despite an increasing propensity towards home, pet and travel cover.

All age groups above 35 years old purchased insurance in higher numbers than their demographic represented as a split of the total population, confirming what many in the industry know already – insurance skews old.

Ultimately the data is a reminder that the personal lines market is not an abstract mass of GWP figures and balance sheets, but a vast, interconnected system shaped by the everyday choices of millions of ‘Average Joes’.