Car Insurers - scum of the earth?

[BatManc]

So after driving for nine years accident free, never claiming and having no convictions whatsoever my insurance has gone from £280 to £550 (cheapest quote i can find) in a year.

How can they insurance companies take the piss so much? I hope fluffy, mr Insurance man's cute family rabbit gets eaten by the neighbours dog, his wife runs away with the milkman and his only child ends up on Jeremy kyle with married to a jobless tosspot with 5 kids.

Seriosuly though, I'm 26, drive a 7 year old Mini Cooper and never claimed yet it'd be cheaper to get six months uninsured driving out of an old, beat up £250 astra and settle for it being confiscated when/if caught.

[Ewan S]

Insure your mum on it. Colleagues insurance on an ST170 just dropped by £170 by putting his mum on as a named driver, and the insurance on both my cars dropped by nearly £200 by putting mum and dad on it as named drivers.

[spikeyhead]

Given that they are all losing money on car insurance and have been for a few years, it's hardly surprising that they are pushing up prices.

ETA, have a go at those that are providing like for like hire cars for fifeteen weeks whilst they find the right parts, whiplash claims for the eleven passengers in the Fiat Uno, etc

Edited by spikeyhead on Monday 4th October 11:06

[S1MMA]

what is this, insurance bashing week?

Motor premiums have all gone up in the UK. Credit hire problems as well as increasing personal injury claims mean you pay more. google credit hire to find out more.

It's a massively competitive market, if you can't find cheaper terms elsewhere it means that your premium is reflective of your "current" risk profile. Insurance is the spread of risk, where the premiums of the many pay for the claims of the few. If insurers are not making money, they will charge more, selectively. Your risk characteristics have obviously seen a hike across the board for your price to go up by that much, but such is life.

[Neil H]

Driving record is only part of the story, it could be that there's been an increase of thefts/ claims in your area and your postcode has been made more of a risk, or loads of other factors.

[UncleRic]

Mine went UP by £100 over last years policy. 30% increase.
No worries, I thought. I'll just get another quote from someone else and save ££'s.
Could I get anyone else to go any cheaper?
Nope.

[BatManc]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

That's barely relative though is it? Insurance companies have realised they're not making enough so they effectiley double what they charge, now imagine, sticking by your logic everyone did this. Still acceptable? Would your mum still pay 55p for your bread? Then twice the previous amount for Gas, Electricity, Clothes, etc? Granted, times are tough, etc. etc. But my point is, when you're pretty much proven to be the type of customer they're after and they hike the prices to the point of it being cheaper to say fk it, it's easier to go without insurance, then surely something's wrong?

[insurance_jon]

Also, just be thankfull that you haven't had any points/claims etc, the rise would be a lot higher then. As mentioned by others the lowest claims ratios the insurers are running at is around 108% loss, the higest are in the 160's, these are before the costs of running the business are taken.

Some insurers have run from the motor market (NIG for example), and Quinn went into administration mainly from UK drivers.

[Sonic]

BatManc said:

... But my point is, when you're pretty much proven to be the type of customer they're after and they hike the prices to the point of it being cheaper to say fk it, it's easier to go without insurance, then surely something's wrong?

Yep. The penalty for driving without insurance needs to go up as well

[Brighton Speed]

Don't know if this is any good to you? The guy who runs this and one or two other motoring sites seems pretty on the ball:

http://beattheinsurancequote.co.uk/

Good luck!

[edo]

dont blame your insurer (completely).

Blame the bankers, the "my neck hurts" brigade, and the "I need a Porsche whilst my mini is repaired" brigade.

[Jim the Sunderer]

• Discerning drivers of premium motors demanding a like-for-like hire car.
• Wally brained yoofs crashing.
• Ouch my neck where's my cheque?
• Women.
• Chumps binning it the last time we had a bit of snow.

But yes, the insurance companies are bad ones and probably price fix, probably.

Edited by Jim the Sunderer on Monday 4th October 11:43

[AndrewTait]

OK, I understand the way that insurance works, but surely this is what is flawed.

If you have to claim, then fair enough, put the costs up, if you don't claim, leave them as they are. At the end of the day, if you don't claim they are getting money for nothing.

Surely the people who make the claims should be the ones made to pay the price. The insurer will still get the same level of profit, just from the people who make them do some work.

[Deva Link]

BatManc said:

I'm 26,

I wonder if there's something wierd going on?

When my daugher was 26 (last year) her insurance leapt up as well. She's always been insured with Admiral and we do have to have a bit of battle to get a reasonable price out of them every year, but she paid around £250 at 25 and it went to £450. Shopped around and did find slightly, but not much, better. Called Admiral and they just refused to budge. So moved to the slightly cheaper Zurich Connect.

This year now she's 27, normal service seems to have been resumed, typicall comparison sit premium was in the £200's and she ended up with LV= for £220.

[The fatboy]

Sonic said:

BatManc said:

... But my point is, when you're pretty much proven to be the type of customer they're after and they hike the prices to the point of it being cheaper to say fk it, it's easier to go without insurance, then surely something's wrong?

Yep. The penalty for driving without insurance needs to go up as well

also get rid of those crash to cash bs

[BatManc]

Deva Link said:

BatManc said:

I'm 26,

I wonder if there's something wierd going on?

When my daugher was 26 (last year) her insurance leapt up as well. She's always been insured with Admiral and we do have to have a bit of battle to get a reasonable price out of them every year, but she paid around £250 at 25 and it went to £450. Shopped around and did find slightly, but not much, better. Called Admiral and they just refused to budge. So moved to the slightly cheaper Zurich Connect.

This year now she's 27, normal service seems to have been resumed, typicall comparison sit premium was in the £200's and she ended up with LV= for £220.

That's interesting, i'll have a look at what it'd be if i were a year older. Settled on paying the £550 now

[S1MMA]

AndrewTait said:

OK, I understand the way that insurance works, but surely this is what is flawed.

If you have to claim, then fair enough, put the costs up, if you don't claim, leave them as they are. At the end of the day, if you don't claim they are getting money for nothing.

Surely the people who make the claims should be the ones made to pay the price. The insurer will still get the same level of profit, just from the people who make them do some work.

Claims history cannot be the only basis for differentiating insurance pricing, you need to have variable prices for other homogenous risk characteristics (age/postcode/vehicle type etc...) for which the rating factors are driven by experience (claims). You need to think about things on a macro level, not one case at a time.

If there are 1,000,000 people insured with a company, and 10,000 crashes in a year, in which 7,000 are caused by 17-19 year olds, then ALL 17-19 year olds must pay more as they have a higher probability (compared to the other age groups) to crash in future. It's not feasible to just charge those 7,000 people that crashed more, and leave all the other 17-19 year olds paying the same, as the same 17-19 year olds who crashed last year won't necessarily crash this year, but you can bet your arse that there will be a lot of crashes by young drivers the next year. So they all have to suffer unfortunately. Those young drivers that do crash will pay significantly more than those that dont, but the base pricing for all people in that group has to be higher compared to other groups.

Go buy a book on actuarial science if you want to know more.

[cmackay81]

Brighton Speed said:

Don't know if this is any good to you? The guy who runs this and one or two other motoring sites seems pretty on the ball:

http://beattheinsurancequote.co.uk/

Good luck!

lol, that site gave me a cheapest quote over double what I am paying now.

• *..starting to get scared for next year!***

[Muzzer]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

What a bizarre statement.

Of course it's relative.

It's a product. A captive product in that it's compulsory, but it's still a product.

The cost of providing that product has gone up markedly due to fraudulent claims, hire car costs, false whiplash claims, etc.

It's not different to the cost of oil going up and the prices at the pumps rising accordingly, or the cost of gas rising and your household bills going up.

To use BR's bread example, which you tried to shoot down, do you think supermarkets would gather in a huddle and say

"You know what, let's make a loss on all these loaves of bread and not charge 55p for them because it's something that people really need and it's not fair"

Of course they wouldn't.

Don't blame insurance companies - blame people who think milking the insurance company for everything they can get or milking insurance companies as a career is good practice.

[Kozy]

There seems to be several of these threads every day now, if the wider public are also starting to feel as if they are being ripped off (and we are, regardless of the reasons) then maybe we could see some kind of pressure building to change the regulations allowing people to take the piss when claiming.