Car insurance has more than doubled, circumstances the same, what is happening?

jedtrently

Hi,

Like many in this uncertain financial time, i'm struggling with car insurance quotes. My car is due a renewal. Obviously inflation is higher but my quote by my current insurer, admiral, has more than doubled. The best they could do was to double last year's quote  to £1050. It's a 2L petrol mazda 2007. I've done countless comparison sites and the best i'm getting , even with a bit of creative license with the forms, is £850. My circumstances are identical to last year. Surely there is another factor in this?

Is there a way to check if i've been blacklisted or how my insurance file looks? My credit report is ok, about the same as last year. No more convictions or anything. Same car. 

Some companies won't even offer me a quote. If I can't get it down to about £600-700, I might have to think about selling the car. 

Does anyone have any advice apart from the usual add named drivers, job title etc, car insurance tricks?

Thank you

DullGreyGuy

The main advice is to do any of that "creativity" using dummy details any only introduce your real details when you are ready to get the final quote to buy... insurers monitor for people manipulating their answers on successive quotes and will start loading or declining if they spot it.

Unfortunately its not just inflation but the issues with parts and secondhand car prices going up that means from an underwriting perspective insurers have been making losses for the last few years on Motor and so EY were predicting notable increases this year and more increases next year as they try to return to an underwriting profit. 

Stubod

..so much for 10% inflation.....like everybody else they are just making up excuses and profiteering.

Our local independant garage is still selling petrol at around 8p/litre cheaper than everybody else in the area...??!! 

DullGreyGuy

Stubod said:

..so much for 10% inflation.....like everybody else they are just making up excuses and profiteering.

Our local independant garage is still selling petrol at around 8p/litre cheaper than everybody else in the area...??!! 

Inflation is an average... it doesnt mean everything goes up the same amount. 

Making up excuses? Even a low cost player like Admiral last year paid out £1.02 in claims and operating expenses for every £1 of premium it received, eSure was worse at £1.11 per £1 premium.  How many other companies would be happy selling their main product below whats its costing them... but yeah, its just an excuse.

Sea_Shell

DullGreyGuy said:

Stubod said:

..so much for 10% inflation.....like everybody else they are just making up excuses and profiteering.

Our local independant garage is still selling petrol at around 8p/litre cheaper than everybody else in the area...??!! 

Inflation is an average... it doesnt mean everything goes up the same amount. 

Making up excuses? Even a low cost player like Admiral last year paid out £1.02 in claims and operating expenses for every £1 of premium it received, eSure was worse at £1.11 per £1 premium.  How many other companies would be happy selling their main product below whats its costing them... but yeah, its just an excuse.

But are EVERYBODY'S premiums doubling at renewal, where nothing has changed.  

Surely if insurers are making losses, as you suggest, then all policyholders should be seeing similar increases.

Is it industry wide "inflation"?

DullGreyGuy

Sea_Shell said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Stubod said:

..so much for 10% inflation.....like everybody else they are just making up excuses and profiteering.

Our local independant garage is still selling petrol at around 8p/litre cheaper than everybody else in the area...??!! 

Inflation is an average... it doesnt mean everything goes up the same amount. 

Making up excuses? Even a low cost player like Admiral last year paid out £1.02 in claims and operating expenses for every £1 of premium it received, eSure was worse at £1.11 per £1 premium.  How many other companies would be happy selling their main product below whats its costing them... but yeah, its just an excuse.

But are EVERYBODY'S premiums doubling at renewal, where nothing has changed.  

Surely if insurers are making losses, as you suggest, then all policyholders should be seeing similar increases.

Is it industry wide "inflation"?

Not all insurers are making underwriting losses in Motor/Home but the majority are as the industry average COR is above 100% for both products. Just as you can be lucky/unlucky if a drunk driver hits your parked car or the one next to it so insurers can be lucky or unlucky with their choice of customers. Like investment management, insurers will talk about underwriting discipline but statistical analysis of both underwriting and investment shows a poor correlation suggesting its as much luck as skill (though easier with mass market products like this than say if you write insurance just for nuclear power stations). 

Insurers will decide they need to increase premiums by at least £X and/or Y%. The crude mechanism is to simply increase everyones premium by Y% but analysis shows that some customers are more price sensitive than others and so most will apply more sophistication as to how its distributed. 

Naturally the OP says nothings changed for them but that doesnt mean nothings changed for their insurer... they may have had a massive spike in cat thefts from the OP's model of car and so despite the "no change" reported there is a loading as the car is now seen as more risky and this compounded with the Y% average premium increase will be a double whammy. 

There are many on here reporting increases around 50% which is slightly higher than EY predicted but not a million miles away, the OP with a doubling is likely to have a deterioration in some other factor (area, vehicle etc) which they arent aware of and seeing the two compounding.

Sea_Shell

I miss rating guides !! 😉

You knew where you were with a rating guide.  Transparent pricing tables and comparisons were easy.

Marvel1

Not sure, as after reading threads I was expecting a lot more, but had my renewal quote today and it's £258, last year it was £175.  

Checked 1 comparsion site give me £211 - happy with that and took it (£42 cashback), so £169.

DullGreyGuy

Sea_Shell said:

I miss rating guides !! 😉

You knew where you were with a rating guide.  Transparent pricing tables and comparisons were easy.

Wouldnt be too surprised if a number of insurers didn't still use fairly straightforward rating tables for calculating the technical premium. Last time I worked for a Motor insurer they were trying to move from using 1d and 2d rating tables to a fancy new system that got everyone excited about the level of complexity you could build. 

The problem came when trying to run the volumes of quotes they needed to do, the equivalent to the 3 servers they used for Prod and DR just couldn't get to a 10th the volume required and there was no appetite to have the number of servers required to run it properly. Ended up just updating the existing engine to be able to deal with 3D tables (aka cubes) which enabled 3 interdependent factors to be interlinked but makes representing on paper much more complex

Transparent though? Not really, those tables for direct insurance was closely guarded secrets that most staff in the company wouldnt have access to let alone anyone outside the company. 

No doubt with the advancement of processing power the other is now live

Sea_Shell

I meant transparent, in that as a broker, you could see exactly how premiums compared, and were calculated, by different insurers.

Yes, it was time consuming and you had to have a pretty good idea of which were usually best for what / who.

Husband and wife - Commercial Union
Young Driver - Pegasus
etc (IIRC 😉)

The advent of computerised Motor Quote software helped "compare the market" more comprehensively.   The tapes/disks would arrive monthly to be uploaded!! 

Then the direct lot started....RIP High street brokers 😉

DullGreyGuy

Sea_Shell said:

I meant transparent, in that as a broker, you could see exactly how premiums compared, and were calculated, by different insurers.

Some intermediaries still can, though as you say it's loaded into their software these days and many lease their software so dont have direct access. 

They did however become more nuanced and so the young driver with the hot hatch may be best with ABC who are kind to young drivers or maybe XYZ who focus more on the driver than the car but then LDN are kind to those living in London.