Budget Direct has won comparison site Canstar’s inaugural Insurer of the Year Award, recognising its strong combination of insurance products and customer satisfaction.

The award is for the insurer that offers outstanding value and performs strongly in customer satisfaction, Canstar says.

Canstar assessed 20 insurance providers, comparing price and features of insurance products and customer satisfaction ratings from more than 22,000 Australian insurance holders and says value for money and comprehensiveness of cover stood out as key drivers of overall satisfaction.

“It is particularly exciting because of the criteria. We could not be more proud,” Budget Direct Chief Growth Officer Jonathan Kerr told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

“When our insurance products, services, prices and customer satisfaction are compared with the rest of the market, Budget Direct is Australia's best. We take great pride in providing award-winning cover for less.”

Budget Direct performed well across both car and home & contents insurance, offering competitively priced policies with a comprehensive level of cover. It also performed strongly for customer satisfaction.

"Sometimes people think of Budget Direct as still this challenger brand but we are getting up to being the third largest motor insurer in Australia,” Mr Kerr said. “We are still considered the new ones but we are 22 years old this year and we are by far the fastest growing insurer in Australia in the last five years.”

Mr Kerr says the team is “fanatical” about delivering real customer value and delivers “more value than anybody else to the customer”.

“If you put that first then you get very profitable growth. If you put other things ahead of that you will struggle to compete against a really finely tuned business like we are,” he said. “It is exciting to see when these independent entities review these leading products from the customer’s perspective, motor and home for instance, we win them.”