A giant yellow sad-face icon accompanies a report on the Insurance Age website this week noting that motor insurance premiums have, alas, begun to fall. Any hopes that motor insurance might yield some kind of a profit must once again be shelved, after four years of rising premiums finally tailed off and wilted.
How does Insurance Age know this? Why, thanks to the Confusing.com/Towels Watson Car Insurance Price Index. The CTWCIPI (pronounced kutwasippi) is an index what is based upon more than four million quotes and proves conclusively that the average comprehensive motor insurance policy was £816 at the end of March 2012, down a whole £19 from the comparable figure a year previously.
The average premium paid by 17-20 year olds plummeted £92 in the first quarter of this year to a pitiful £2,499. The over-65s, meanwhile, paid just £438, a shaving of £13 off the figure for the previous quarter. This despite the damning fact, reported in Insurance Times this week, that “the elderly are more likely to make claims, and for a higher amount” with “the average claim made by someone over 65 nearly three-and-a-half times more expensive than one made by a person under 50” (and presumably we’re not talking about two random unrepresentative individuals here). No wonder BIBA and the ABI are now planning to erect warning signposts in areas where older drivers are known to operate!
Towels Watson bloke Dunk Anderson, opined that perhaps the price increases of the previous years had helped insurers “address profitability issues” resulting from “spiralling bodily injury” claims. Whilst decreasing premiums may be good news for consumers, 🙂 Dunk says, “uncertainty in the market remains” and “claims inflation has not gone away” 🙁
Uncertain whether he was looking at a blip or a trend, confused Garth Klot suggested intriguingly that “hard-pressed customers would be well-advised to shop around.”
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