Just after the dotcom crash, the shake-out lurched many towards a complete rejection of dotcom strategy. But many CIOs took the best of the dotcom boom and have carved out a strong niche from understanding and acting as advocates of what the online model can do for a business. David Williams, IT director of insurance aggregator , is today an advocate of what dotcom has achieved. The insurance aggregation business wouldn't have existed without the internet boom and during his career he has also helped change the nature of airlines and successfully introduced IT to parts of the NHS.

It is currently estimated that four out of 10 car insurance policies are purchased through insurance aggregation sites like Confused.com. The Cardiff-based company states that it processed 11 million quotations in 2007. Insurance aggregators are, in essence, price comparison sites which introduce customers to the providers of insurance policies for car, home and travel insurance, and recently the company introduced energy price comparisons to its portfolio. Williams explains it as a single point of contact from which consumers can choose a policy, having only had to input their details once.

Confused is part of the , also based in Cardiff. New -aggregators are muscling in on the market and in the first half of 2007 Admiral rep-orted to the stock market that the operating profit for Confused fell from £19.7m (US$28 million) to £15.6m due to heavy investment in marketing to defend its market position.

As a key member of the management team, IT director Williams is not afraid to share his views on the aggregation market and rival outfits.

"We always go to the partners' [the insurance policy providers] sites and we don't favour any companies. There's more competition now. There are different models of aggregation, but not all the price comparison sites return quotes using the latest information."