My car insurance has gone mental- any ideas?

[roachcoach]

Really? Citation please. I find that difficult to believe when every time company accounts are released insurance companies report increased profits.

I think it's something to do with them investing the premiums and getting a return off of that too.

Not sure of the specifics though.

[keithwalton]

Avoid comparison sites and try an actual broker that specialises in insurance (example adrian flux)

I went with them when my insurance went up from £1000 to £2600 on renewal (import impreza)

the best comparison sites could manage was £900 (went back to my insurer with that and they dropped the quote to 2 grand ..)
went to flux and they offered £600 sold! recently renewed it for £525.

The policy is underwritten by aviva, going to them direct they wanted £1600!

I think insurance companies are now using comparison sites to check out there opposition and bumping up their policies when they find they significantly undercut the major players.
Its mass price fixing!

Also unless your under 21, fully comp tends to be cheaper than tpft these days, only thing to watch out for is the excess rates are usually much higher

[wazi]

try admiral

[pp05]

Your location will have a bearing on your quote.

I was asked to use moneysupermarket to get an idea for my uncle and basically for him to insure his car on his own road with his own off street parking was double than if he had done it at my place. Yeah he was shocked. I don't understand insurance, especially for young drivers. Getting £2000+ for driving a car worth £500, what is the point. Also it's pointless getting 3rd party since the difference isn't much.

[[GSV]Myocardial]

Your location will have a bearing on your quote.

I was asked to use moneysupermarket to get an idea for my uncle and basically for him to insure his car on his own road with his own off street parking was double than if he had done it at my place. Yeah he was shocked. I don't understand insurance, especially for young drivers. Getting £2000+ for driving a car worth £500, what is the point. Also it's pointless getting 3rd party since the difference isn't much.

It's not the cost of the car that the insurer are worried about, it's the cost of replacing others stuff, example of a young driver sticking an Astra VXR into someones house in Aylesbury, or paying out the medical bills and potential award if that young person knocks over a child or adult and gives them a permanent disability. The cost for that persons welfare for their entire life will be huge compared to the £500 it cost for the car. An example of a single payout that would cost a fair amount more than the piddling £2k premium: Record payout in 2006 as an example

I think most of the people moaning about insurance companies really need to try and get a better understanding of who's benefitting through insurance companies continuing in business in fact any company continuing in business as the complete lack of understanding of the bigger picture is laughable. Pension, stock & shares ISA etc anyone? If so that's all being paid out of these companies making money and those pension schemes are going to need a fairly large amount more cash if they're going to get out of the negative situation they've been in.

Personally I really wouldn't be worrying about a small rise in insurance cost, especially if you have a mortgage, I'd be worrying about the state of the economy in general. I personally think that gone are the days of cheap stuff in the UK, and we'll be seeing a fairly large increase in the cost of living. Be funny to watch all the people who change phones every year etc to the latest and greatest and waste money of frivolous whims and fashion given a severe reality shock when all they can afford is one meal a day just so they can make their mortgage payments, let alone be in the position to run a spare car

If you actually look at the accounts of most large insurance companies, the reason's they're making bigger profits is in several of the cases down to the fact that it's been a given trend that they retain more of their profits to invest in their own businesses underwriting activities rather than using reinsurers and Nameco's, this therefore leads them to generate better returns from their own cash and therefore improved profits for shareholders, but conversely it also means that they're on the hook for more liability and so they have to make larger provision for payouts. Similarly there's been a large amount of consolidation in most markets leading to much larger companies with higher revenues and therefore higher profits, doesn't mean that profits have actually increased massively in relation to the revenue.

Motor insurance is a numbers game, plain and simple and size matters. It's an agregation of all the claims, legal costs, employment costs etc against both the premium and investment income. And they often run at pretty low margins in the 3-6% range on this business (you would struggle to borrow money at this rate as a large FTSE 250 listed company; we struggled to get in this range for the past two years and most smaller companies can whistle dixie on this one).

As motor insurance is the slow and steady there are insurances that are much more volatile and while they make good profits in some years, take earthquke cover for instance, you'll be paying a fortune in Japan for such cover at the moment, but this will fall until the next big event at which time insurers make a loss. The motor insurance is helping the insurers pay for other risks, you can't look at it in isolation as people seem too. No different to a balanced investment portfolio.

Insurance is cheap in all honesty when you consider the life you'd have if you were involved in a major accident that potentially gave you a life long disability.

[roachcoach]

Astra VXR for £500 you say.....where?

I'd take one for that money!


More seriously, from the first post, a 100% increase in a 2 year period is something to bitch about when we're talking in the hundreds of pounds.

From what I've heard/read anecdotally, right now London is a bad places to be getting renewed. I mean it was never great before but now the quotes are as if it is 1980's Beirut...

It's definitely not uniform increases either as I checked my own cover earlier in the thread.

[Rave]

It's not the cost of the car that the insurer are worried about, it's the cost of replacing others stuff, example of a young driver sticking an Astra VXR into someones house in Aylesbury, or paying out the medical bills and potential award if that young person knocks over a child or adult and gives them a permanent disability. The cost for that persons welfare for their entire life will be huge compared to the £500 it cost for the car. An example of a single payout that would cost a fair amount more than the piddling £2k premium: Record payout in 2006 as an example

Yes quite. Though that story goes on to say that if the case had been taken to court, the payout might have been less- which begs the question, why did the insurance company not take it to court?

I genuinely feel sorry for the poor chap, but he presumably got into the car driven by his nutty mate of his own free will. I've had some hair raising rides in crappy cars driven by mad mates myself, and so I suppose I should consider myself lucky. But £4.5m seems a lot to build a purpose built house opposite his parents, and £225,000 a year must buy several full time carers?

I think most of the people moaning about insurance companies really need to try and get a better understanding of who's benefitting through insurance companies continuing in business in fact any company continuing in business as the complete lack of understanding of the bigger picture is laughable. Pension, stock & shares ISA etc anyone? If so that's all being paid out of these companies making money and those pension schemes are going to need a fairly large amount more cash if they're going to get out of the negative situation they've been in.

I understand the wider picture just fine, thanks. I am well aware that the cost of claims has skyrocketed in recent years (despite the overall number of accidents going down year on year). But that is my problem- absolutely nothing seems to be being done to stop people making inflated claims. A whole industry of 'ambulance chasing' lawyers and rip-off car hire firms now make a living off the back of people having accidents.

What really really offends me is that the insurance companies themselves have apparently been passing the details of people who have been involved in accidents to these scum-suckers on the basis that they're going to get done anyway, and so they might as well take a cut since they can pass on the cost in increased premiums- especially since, as another poster has pointed out, price comparison websites make it easy to adjust premiums to be broadly in line with your competitors on a daily basis.

But that is, frankly, a disgrace. In a decent society, leeches should not be allowed to make a living off the back of decent, sensible people. I'm glad that the OFT are now investigating, but I'm not hopeful about the outcome.

If I was hit by another driver, and then got a call from a car hire firm or some ambulance chasing lawyers, I'd politely ask to know who sold them my details- before I told them to Sod Off And Die You Parasitic Vampire Scum. Because I'd be very interested in persuing a Data Protection Act complaint against whatever git sold them my details. I'm on OFCOM's 'don't call' list for a start.

Personally I really wouldn't be worrying about a small rise in insurance cost, especially if you have a mortgage, I'd be worrying about the state of the economy in general.

I don't have a mortgage- because, as a member of housepricecrash.co.uk since 2004, I saw which way the wind was blowing. I'm trying to save up a deposit for when prices re-adjust to normal. Usurious insurance prices are not helping my saving efforts.

But again, I think this is crappy argument- in essence you're arguing that you shouldnt argue against a minor ripoff when you've got major ones to worry about. I say that we should be arguing against them all.

I personally think that gone are the days of cheap stuff in the UK, and we'll be seeing a fairly large increase in the cost of living. Be funny to watch all the people who change phones every year etc to the latest and greatest and waste money of frivolous whims and fashion given a severe reality shock when all they can afford is one meal a day just so they can make their mortgage payments, let alone be in the position to run a spare car

Yes true. But I bet all the ambulance chasers have plenty of money off the back of people who do real jobs.

Insurance is cheap in all honesty when you consider the life you'd have if you were involved in a major accident that potentially gave you a life long disability.

Yes but that has always been a risk; a risk that statistically is decreasing. So very clearly that is not the cause of the increased premiums that everyone is seeing. It is in fact attributable to people being encouraged to believe that they're entitled to a nice hire car for 8 weeks while their own car is being slowly dealt with, and two grand compensation for having a bit of a stiff neck.