Coming from the UK bank personnel, I think the authors are thinking more about gocompare and moneysupermarket, which you can think of as centralised reverse-auc

Coming from the UK bank personnel, I think the authors are thinking more about gocompare and moneysupermarket, which you can think of as centralised reverse-auction sites. And from personal experience, at least for general home utilities and insurance providers ... they work reasonably well. They would be really good if the quotes also included the small print features in comparable dimensions. At the moment you'll need to go over all those yourself, and doing that side-by-side even just for the best options takes a lot of time. But due to financial nature of the services, there is plenty of space for dirty kickbacks. Hence, trying to reduce collusion within and between the choice engines is a laudable goal. Disclosure: Finnish expat, UK resident.