MSE News: Summer Budget 2015: Insurance premium tax to rise

As an Insurance Broker myself working in the Property Owners market I am really really not looking forward to this! It's also going to coincide with changes to Pool Re Terrorism cover, where client's will now have to include VAT in their sum insured regardless of whether the underlying buildings policy requires the client to insure for this or not. A 20% jump in the sum insured combined with the additional tax is not going to go down well at all. :mad:

All this tax will do is put more and more pressure on premiums and brokers earnings (as if there wasn't enough already)! After doing this job for some 5 years now, the impression I get is that the general public seem to think that if a broker earns anything more than about 10% commission that it is somehow scandalous!! I suppose most of the general public don't know though that it's actually the brokers that do most of the work (especially when you have delegated authority arrangements). All the insurer has to do is debit the premium and (maybe) pay a claim every now and again!

As said above though, at least it's a level playing field for everyone.