Admiral is having to get used to the idea of a far harsher competitive environment for Confused.com, its price comparison website, which pioneered the market for aggregating insurance quotes on the internet.

Where just over a year ago, MoneySupermarket probably represented the main rival for Confused, now it has to contend with as many as nine competitors, all advertising their wares on television.

Confused.com claims about two-thirds of market share. Admiral said this will have to give over the coming months, with the increasingly fierce battle for online consumers likely to send its advertising costs past the £25 million mark for this year.

Nevertheless, Admiral still believes it can put on growth in the online sector and is confident it will be one of the three to four players who will eventually dominate the aggregators' market once an inevitable qualitative shake-through has taken place.

Full-year profits at Confused, which gave out 13 million quotes last year, leapt by 59 per cent to £36.7 million in 2007. This is against group pre-tax profits that rose 24 per cent to £182.1 million over the same period - and at a group that appears not to be overly reliant on this one particular part of the business for growth.

Despite the increased market competition, Admiral still believes it can double its UK operations within the next three to four years and is clearly prepared to shell out advertising expenditure in order to protect its market share.

In motor insurance, it increased rates by 4.4 per cent last year, in line with the wider industry increase. This was probably long overdue - the cost of car cover had not risen before then for about five years. Again, although it has cautioned that the market is tough, Admiral remains confident it can retain market share.

And internationally, Admiral's love of the internet means its low start-up costs make for a business that can quickly diversify its revenue base across countries such as Spain and Germany, where it is already present, and Italy, where it will launch later this year.

From an investor's point of view, Admiral's commitment to paying a special annual dividend makes it very attractive. The firm pays out 90 per cent of its profits as a dividend and the shares currently yield 4 per cent. It seems likely only to benefit from its recent entry into the FTSE 100.

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