Car insurance 'greedflation?

david29dpo

Stubod said:

..be interesting to know what cars are involved? Seems that certain EV's and Range Rovers are being hit hardest??

So would I. My friends insurance for his Range Rover has increased 200%!

victor2

david29dpo said:

Stubod said:

..be interesting to know what cars are involved? Seems that certain EV's and Range Rovers are being hit hardest??

So would I. My friends insurance for his Range Rover has increased 200%!

Wasn't it a Range Rover that started the fire at Luton airport? That must have hit insurance companies quite hard! 

DullGreyGuy

Curmudgeon101 said:

So like a bad penny, time to renew the car insurance rolls around. My beloved and myself are in our early 60s, 10 years NCB, 10,000 miles pa, we run one very boring car. Last year we paid £225. The quote this year was £666 (Iron Maiden?), this represents an increase of around 200%. This means one of three things either my wife and I have suddenly become wildly more dangerous drivers; or the cost of settling claims has rocketed; or the insurance industry is taking advantage of high inflation rates. Considering the latter let's say inflation has been at 10% then we might have expected a premium of £250 not £666. As things stand we left our existing insurer and the best we could do with another provider was £416, an increase of only 85%.
What's the deal here? Is the insurance industry having a laugh?

Insurers dont price you personally, they price people like you. So it wouldn't mean you personally have become dangerous drivers or that your personal car has been involved in a lot of accidents/thefts but that others that share similar characteristics or own the same make/model of car etc. Your Range Rover may not even have moved in 6 months but because lots of others have been stolen you'd see an increase in price. 

2 is a massive factor, parts are still a major problem. There was another poster on here yesterday saying their car suffered modest damage, couple of days work but was undrivable and took over 3 months for it to be repaired so they racked up over £6,000 in hire car charges which the at fault driver's insurance is being asked to pay... had it been normal times with parts in stock that would have been sub £200 of hire. 

For the last two years the motor insurance industry as a whole has been making significant underwriting losses, a combined ratio of 115% for the industry means that for every £100 of premium they took after tax they had to pay out £115 in claims and operations costs. 

SouthLondonUser

As much as I hate the apparently random insurance premium increases, it's not like insurers are printing money and are worth more than Apple Microsoft Nvidia etc! So they aren't exactly printing money.

A big part is the cost of parts and repairs. 20 years ago it was quite easy and banal to repair, say, a broken mirror. Nowadays most mirrors are motorised and have integrated signalling lights. All of that makes costs explode. A friend repaired 1 mirror of a bog-standard Golf, and it cost > £600 - and this was going through the insurer-approved garage to keep costs down, and without claiming for any other cost.

20 years ago replacing a bumper was cheap - just a piece of plastic. Now it's got sensors and cameras and what not.

Add to this that cars have got wider and wider, meaning greater chances of bumps in our narrow roads and narrow parking lots.

Plus certain brands are guilty of appallingly poor design and are objectively easier to steal than others; keyless in general is an idiocy which adds cost while reducing security, but this is particularly true of certain brands (Range Rovers are much easier to steal than Teslas).

mgfvvc

david29dpo said:

Stubod said:

..be interesting to know what cars are involved? Seems that certain EV's and Range Rovers are being hit hardest??

So would I. My friends insurance for his Range Rover has increased 200%!

Modern Range Rovers with keyless entry have been identified as particularly easy to steal. Some people have been unable to insure their Range Rovers and JLR have had to partner with an insurer to try to minimise the issue. At one point a lot of Range Rovers were practically unsellable due to the difficulty of insuring them.
It may have improved with security updates from JLR?

Nebulous2

The latest retirement living standards say that the 'comfortable' retired couple intend to reduce from two cars to one, partly due to rising costs. 

Personal transport is going to become more expensive, and available to fewer people. This is simply another part of that jigsaw. 

The manufacturers aren't helping, by pulling their smallest cheapest cars from the market. 

Alanp

mgfvvc said:

david29dpo said:

Stubod said:

..be interesting to know what cars are involved? Seems that certain EV's and Range Rovers are being hit hardest??

So would I. My friends insurance for his Range Rover has increased 200%!

Modern Range Rovers with keyless entry have been identified as particularly easy to steal. Some people have been unable to insure their Range Rovers and JLR have had to partner with an insurer to try to minimise the issue. At one point a lot of Range Rovers were practically unsellable due to the difficulty of insuring them.
It may have improved with security updates from JLR?

Even land rovers own insurance won’t insure some Land Rover owners, I wonder if these hikes will just encourage more people to risk driving with no insurance, or, older motorists may decide to get rid of their cars and use public transport, either way, insurance companies will lose out, but will increase it even more to cover these costs

Ganga

All i would say is when this financial storm dies down remember the companies that put the prices up the most and give them a wide berth in the future even if they are a few quid cheaper.

JLMartin

My elderly dad who is 85 next month paid £516 for 10 months on a new (second hand) car.  I have been trying to compare for him and they all are quoting around the £1k mark?  The cheapest I can find so far is £898.11. I don't know if we can do any better?  He may be considered high risk for his age but he is in fact very good for his age and only drives part time.  We put in 2000 mileage but if that.  He uses buses a lot but for places you need a car for at relatives homes, etc.  It's kept securely in a garage as well.  I'm not sure about one detail which needs to be accurate but I will clear that with him.  He is 2.5 weeks away from renewal date.

Arunmor

JLMartin said:

My elderly dad who is 85 next month paid £516 for 10 months on a new (second hand) car.  I have been trying to compare for him and they all are quoting around the £1k mark?  The cheapest I can find so far is £898.11. I don't know if we can do any better?  He may be considered high risk for his age but he is in fact very good for his age and only drives part time.  We put in 2000 mileage but if that.  He uses buses a lot but for places you need a car for at relatives homes, etc.  It's kept securely in a garage as well.  I'm not sure about one detail which needs to be accurate but I will clear that with him.  He is 2.5 weeks away from renewal date.

Have you added yourself as another driver, that may help and could be useful in an emergency.