Are there no depths to which “experts” will not sink. You don’t get a question mark because that’s a rhetorical question (technically, an instance of erotema) to which no answer is required or expected. Because there aren’t, are there? (Again rhetorical, in case you wondered.)
Some shower going by the name of Capital Economics have accepted an undisclosed sum from some lawyers’ pressure group called Axes to Justice to put its name to the biggest old load of codswallop Bankstone News – or any other more-or-less weekly insurance themed news-zine, we’ll wager – has ever had the misfortune to hear.
Basically, they’re trying to make out that insurers aren’t really attempting to abolish personal injury claims to save hard-pressed motor insurance customers from paying even higher motor insurance premiums than they already have to, thanks to the government whacking up Insane Punishment Tax (IPT) like there’s no tomorrow and whacking down the Ogden rate like interest rates are never going to rise.
Oh no, if you listen to the paid-for propaganda research output of so-called Capital Economics, insurers are doing it so they can make an extra £700m a year for themselves.
Well, maybe that’s what you’d do, Capital Economics, if that’s even your real name, but, literally, how dare you accuse Britain’s insurers of being motivated by any such base and shallow motives. If insurers say they’re doing it for decent honest claim-free motorists like you and me, you can be pretty darned sure they mean it!
You don’t need an expert – let alone a whole gaggle of experts like Capital Economics – to see that it’s not insurers who are putting up the price of motor insurance – it’s dodgy people pretending to have neck pain and literally stealing your money and mine from out of the insurers’ pockets.
That’s why personal injury claims have been multiplying like randy rabbits with a point to prove, while the overall number of motor accidents has plummeted like lemmings in tiny little diving boots.
But, oh no, according to so-called analysis carried out (read: faked up) by Capital Economics, the only reason why the number of accidents appears to have fallen (by 32% between 2003 and 2014) is that (get this) there are fewer traffic police officers around these days (37% fewer over the same period) due to them all having been cut or whatever.
CE also try to make out that just because the number of people being hospitalised didn’t fall during those years it means the number of accidents didn’t fall. In reality of course it simply shows that dishonest drivers have been piling more and more people into their cars in the hope that they might have an accident!
And if that doesn’t strike you as sufficiently like having a laugh, CE also expect us to believe that whiplash claims have nothing to do with rising motor insurance premiums!
“There are other explanations,” CE maintain, in defiance of all reason. “With the insurance business model reliant on firms generating investment returns on their reserves and capital, low interest rates following the financial crisis have been partly responsible.”
By some utterly indefensible massaging of the figures, CE somehow manage to adduce that “the insurance industry’s own estimates indicate that, after accounting for inflation, the total amount they paid out on what they describe as ‘whiplash’ or soft-tissue injury claims declined by 17% between 2007 and 2016, while over the same period, official statistics suggest that premiums increased by an average of 71%.” I think we all know what to think about junk statistics like those!
I suppose they’re going to try and pretend that premiums won’t even come down once personal injury claims have been outlawed. That’s probably what you’re thinking they’re going to try telling us now, isn’t it. Well, isn’t it? We’d love to disappoint you, but, of course, you’re absolutely right as usual!
“Instead of resulting in meaningfully reduced premiums for motorists,” Capital Economics claim eccentrically, “the reforms are more likely to boost insurers’ profits by up to £0.7 billion per annum.”
Not content with that vile and sleazy allegation, Capital Economics go on to question the very idea that fraud is running rife throughout our rotten compensation culture of an excuse for a degenerate nation. They cite ABI figures indicating that last year 99% of motor insurance claims were paid out and that there are “hardly any” successful prosecutions for fraud each year.
Do they acknowledge that this is only because insurers are so generous and good natured about paying anything other than the most outrageously flagrant of claims? Do they heck! CE reckon the ABI’s definition of fraud is so broad that it goes “well beyond any legal basis – and, arguably, any common-sense meaning,” alleging that insurers view claimants accepting a substantially reduced settlement offer as tantamount to a confession.
There’s plenty more of this nonsense we could bore you with, but quite frankly we expect you’ve had enough. The government must act now – without any further delay or discussion – to rid the Great British motoring public of the scourge of scrounging scroungers once and for all.
No responses yet