I've just been on the insurance treadmill the last 2 weeks - the most competitive was Swiftcover and you can manage your policy online. The attraction for me was that the standard policy covered factory options whereas on some other I had to declare these and this bumped the price. HIC couldn't get near the quote.... But I'm 29, 7 NCB, 07 GTI and SP30
As Mikester said - if this is his first policy it may be a good idea to do one of the bonus accelerater schemes as you get 1yr NCB after 9-10 months