Car Insurance and Motor Insurance premiums reach record levels
UK Car Insurance premiums reach record levels!
Well we knew our car insurance premium were always on the up but the results of the latest AA British Insurance Premium Index reveal that rates have actually reached an all time high.
In the final quarter of the year the average car insurance premium for an annual comprehensive car insurance policy increased by a whopping 7.2% on the previous quarter. In real terms this meant that the average premium is now priced at around £1,000.00 per year.
On an annual basis the percentage increase was 18.7% for comprehensive insurance. This is the largest increase in this area of business since the records first began back in 1994. Meanwhile the average premium for third party fire and theft increased in the same period by 8.9% to £1,252.00. Annually third party fire and theft rose by 23.8%.
The increases have come as auto insurers have desperately struggled to make up for a lack of reserves which have slowly been exhausted during the economic downturn. Other factors such as steep rises in settlement costs and an increase in the frequency of personal injury claims can also be attributed to the sociological effects of the recession and are also driving the premiums sky high.
The report has been released at a time that most composite insurers are either actively increasing rates or at least discussing it, but the strategies are varied and diverse.
Zurich have taken the impulsive decision to implement a blanket rate increase on its private motor book, a bold move which has certainly caught the market off guard. The Swiss insurer announced it intended to push forward with sharp increases in personal lines motor expected to be in the region of 20% in the broker channel.
Head of personal lines at Zurich's broker division, Mark Coffey said: "We have not aimed our increases at specific brokers or segments of the market - they are right across the piece. The majority of the increase will come in March and the remainder will follow in April.”
He concluded "It is an industry problem - not specific to Zurich - so I will be intrigued to see how other insurers react."
And they were queuing up to respond too…
An Aviva spokesperson commented that "no plans for blanket motor premium increases". And added that “Aviva's motor pricing strategy is still tailored to the individual - we seek to recognise better risks with more competitive pricing,"
A spokesperson for
Car Insurance comparison website Car-Insurance.tv said, “ We’ve been predicting this for a long time now – the underwriting Insurance Companies can’t keep running on a loss and eating claims reserves ad infinitum.”
Meanwhile both Allianz and Axa indicated prior to Zurich’s move that they will be taking some form of corrective action also.
Gareth McChesney, head of pricing and reporting at Allianz Retail, said: "We applied some strength to our ratings in 2009. It seems others in the market are realising the severity of the situation - just six months later than we did."
"In Q4 last year, the market started to correct itself and in 2010 I would expect to see that continue, certainly for the first half of the year. Zurich has put forward a hefty increase in a single month while the market is adopting slightly smaller increases, say 3-3.5%, every month to come up to an acceptable rating level," he added.
Inevitable yes? Necessary pretty much? Helpful as we come out of recession? I let you answer that! From the pen of Insurance Blogger Kris Oldland.
Labels: auto insurance, car insurance, car insurance premiums, motor insurance, UK Car Insurance
UK Car Insurance Rates Must Harden As Loss Making Companies Claims Reserves Run Dry!
Incredibly
Car Insurance companies in the UK are struggling to make a profit and 2010 is likely to see a large reduction in the supply of car insurance, with many famous brands and suppliers predicted to disappear from the high street and our television screens as the market adjusts to cater for the massive losses, according to analysts from car insurance comparison website
Car-Insurance.tv.
Recently released figures show that the UK Motor Insurance market has been consistently losing money since 2004 when the total UK profit from underwriting car insurance policies was £77 million.
In 2007 the UK car insurance market made a £1.1 billion underwriting loss, last year the loss was £1.3 billion and the figures for 2009 are expected to be worse........
Very few car insurance providers have escaped the losses and are profitable, whilst many have released claims reserves held from previous profitable years to disguise the 'actual ' loss.
So what is causing such massive losses in a large compulsory market that not so long ago was the most aggressive in the world?
On the face of it the answer appears to be simple ...... The Cost of Claims!
Claims are the problem not because the Car Insurance Companies have failed to include the rising costs of claims into their pricing structures; but because they have failed to cover the true costs in the retail price!
Car Insurance underwriters seem to have forgotten the basic rules of betting when setting their prices - and that is, that the Bookie never loses.......
To understand where the car insurance underwriting companies have gone wrong you first need to examine how they arrive at the price of a car insurance policy premium.
The cost of your car insurance premium is basically made up of three components:
1. The costs of production - Staff, Systems, Distribution etc
2. The costs of losses - known claims ratios ( the proportion of a policy premium pool that gets eaten up in claims)
3. Profit
The cost of all these components can be calculated by clever people called actuaries who work for the insurance companies and the rates set accordingly.
So what's gone wrong?
Well naturally it is obvious to first look at claims as the cause of the losses - but the truth is far from this end of the life of a car insurance policy......
The frequency of claims has either fallen or remained fairly constant over the period of losses and the actual cost of claims has only risen by 1 percent.
Despite all the noise made about gangs of car insurance claims fraudsters roaming the streets of the UK, the fact of the matter is that most of this is propoganda aimed at deterring fraud which naturally rises during a recession/depression. The number of fraud cases are really insignificant in the true scale of the market to affect pricing.
Admittedly there has been a significant increase in the number of personal injury related claims, egged on by claims farming companies, which would affect long term pricing, however the losses experienced by Car Insurance companies are nothing to do with claims and claims pricing.
These type of claims fluctuations have always been dealt with successfully in the past by car insurance companies by adjusting reserve ratios or negotiating better re-insurance ( laying the risk off), or more importantly by adjusting price ........
But this time something is different....
Car Insurance Companies can no longer set the price! Not if they want to win the business anyway!
And they certainly cannot sell policies at the premium levels that the Actuaries suggest!
Why? Seemple .......The Internet!
And more importantly Car Insurance Price Comparison websites or aggregators as they are known in the industry, which account for around 90 percent of the Car Insurance sold online. Since around 2004 it has been possible to easily
compare car insurance quotes online from numerous suppliers, and invariably the cheapest premium wins the business.
Car Insurance companies not longer set their own prices! And this is the problem!
In a race to achieve enough volume to make a book of car insurance business profitable the car insurance companies have been selling their
car insurance polices too cheap and covering their losses with their claims reserves........time is running out!
Labels: Actuaries, car insurance, car insurance fraud, Car Insurance Pricing, car insurance rates, cheap car insurance, cheap motor insurance, claims, compare car insurance, premiums, quotes, UK Car Insurance
