The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is seeking tenders to create a home and contents insurance comparison website for north Queensland.

Tenders close on November 21 and the regulator aims to give the winning bidder a contract to develop and maintain the site on about December 8.

The Federal Government has charged ASIC with launching the comparator by March under a strategy to address insurance affordability and availability in the region.

Major home and contents insurers such as Suncorp and IAG do not allow their products to be listed on commercial aggregators, and some in the industry expected the government website to feature only representative policies before directing consumers to insurers’ own sites.

But sources have told insuranceNEWS.com.au the tender documents call for a site that allows consumers to enter their postcodes, suburbs and house types to obtain a price guide and policy features comparison.

It must also have data on disputes handled by the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Insurers have raised fears that giving comparison websites access to data will allow them to reverse-engineer pricing models and extract commercially sensitive information.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told the Senate Estimates Committee last month that aggregators have increased competition for health insurance and other financial services.

“We understand the aggregator is not going to be the only answer necessarily, but we do think it deserves a chance – to see whether it can assist in putting downward pressure on prices,” he said.