MSE News: OFT launches car insurance probe amid price hikes

mikey72

Spiderham wrote: »

I just used the link in OP and this http://www.insurancetimes.co.uk/oft-starts-vehicle-repair-and-credit-hire-probe/1394131.article also this has just been put on insurance times site http://www.insurancetimes.co.uk/abi-welcomes-oft-credit-hire-focus/1394139.article

That refers to the oft link I put in, so maybe we have different views of the same report.

Spiderham

mikey72 wrote: »

That refers to the oft link I put in, so maybe we have different views of the same report.

Only read the MSE article blurb.

As I said, a lot of the issue is around the handling third party claims, where you have credit hire and Claims Management Companies involved, which was followed by a (to my mind silly) view for insurers of "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" where they operate similarly. Attitudes have been that if someone is going to get these fees it might as well be their insurance Co. This has led to increased claims cost, premiums themselves, as far as I've seen, are not suggested to be themselves at excessive profit levels.

The issue is partly that people are more likely to get their full legal entitlement from the other side, add to that dodgy claims and that sends the costs through the roof.

As I said, I think it's of interest to note that the premiums themselves are seen by the OFT to be high because of these claims factors not excessive fat being built in (legal expenses insurance aside). Kickbacks do help insurance cos, but probably a lot less than the cost of the outgoings from other parties' claims and it is in these unregulated industries the problem stems.

Question is, how does it get fixed. Anyone have any sensible suggestions?

Arg

Ignore insurance altogether and rely on your basic right to travel.

Spiderham

Arg wrote: »

Ignore insurance altogether and rely on your basic right to travel.

But obviously ignore both your liabilities in case of an accident per law of tort and indeed your obligation under the Road Traffic Act to have cover in case of "injury" to a third party?

I refer you to the penultimate word of my post.

Of course you can opt out of insurance by depositing £500,000 with the government for each vehicle http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1991/40/section/20

vaio

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8955539/Car-premiums-artificially-high-admits-insurer.html

chanz4

Simple way of getting cheaper insurance, stop using credit hire and go back to the old days of using local hire car firms. £160 a week for a corsa. PI most people milk it, it was not even heard of 10 years ago.

vaio

which is fine if you can afford it, a better idea would be for at fault companies to pro-actively supply replacement cars or even every policy automatically provides a replacement car regardless of fault

Arg

Spiderham wrote: »

But obviously ignore both your liabilities in case of an accident per law of tort and indeed your obligation under the Road Traffic Act to have cover in case of "injury" to a third party?

I refer you to the penultimate word of my post.

Of course you can opt out of insurance by depositing £500,000 with the government for each vehicle http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1991/40/section/20

What liabilities under tort would that be,should I be worried about getting shoe insurance incase I run over someone while dashing for the train?