Welsh entrepreneur finds new role
Debra Williams, the former managing director of Confused.com, has been recruited to run rival price comparison site Tesco Compare.
Williams has been working as managing director of Tesco Compare, the retailer’s financial search engine, since the middle of last month.
Williams would not comment, but a Tesco spokesman said the company was delighted to have her on the team. Tesco Compare covers products including insurance, utilities and loans.
Her role will put her in direct competition with her former employer, Confused.
The Welsh entrepreneur spent four years at Confused, where she helped to build the aggregator from a 20-person outfit to a business with more than 90 employees. Last year, it posted a profit of £32m.
Williams left Confused in June, with the intention of moving to Highway Group in October.
However, when Liverpool Victoria took over Highway in a £150m deal in September, the company was delisted, thwarting her ambition to work for a publicly listed company.
Tesco, the biggest retailer in the UK, is a FTSE 100 company.
Tesco launched its website in September last year, backed by insurance products from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
RBS and Tesco had launched a joint venture to offer banking and insurance products through the supermarket, called Tesco Personal Finance. Tesco bought out the bank’s remaining stake in the venture in July.
When Tesco Compare was launched last year, Williams, then at Confused, said she was pleased RBS had changed its mind about displaying its insurance products on aggregator sites.
“The fact that they were able to put their brands on Tesco Compare has led them to realise the benefits of using price comparison sites,” she said.
