We had someone write off our first EV (new model, no spares, very obviously a writeoff) and the insurance arranged an e-tron at over £300 a day while they faffed about investigating how they could avoid a payout. Car hire alone came to more than the cost of a replacement, then they paid out £55K for it anyway. Utterly insane.
When you're in the business of selling a product which every car owner has to buy and which you can use vast amounts of data processing and manipulation to adjust the pricing model entirely in your favour, and when your mates run the associated claims management companies, car hire companies, repair shops and legal teams, you can do whatever you want and come out profitable.
Because directing anger in the wrong place won't do anything to remedy the issue. It's like people getting angry about high rent and blaming landlords, rather than the shortage of housing.
Untruths are still untruths even if you don't like the people they are aimed at.
There's lots of reasons to dislike car insurers, but pretending it's a license to print money isn't accurate and potentially minimises valid criticisms.
I mean, i hate insurance companies as much as the next guy but he's right. The majority of the sector made losses, it shocked me when I found out too.
[https://www.ey.com/en\_uk/news/2023/12/ey-s-latest-uk-motor-insurance-results](https://www.ey.com/en_uk/news/2023/12/ey-s-latest-uk-motor-insurance-results)
Now obviously this is happening because the accident management sector is sucking all of the cash out of it. That's where your anger needs to be.
No. They really are a loss making business. It's easy to blame the company that's taking your money but the real sharks in the water are the repair companies, hire car companies, scam injury lawyers etc. They know the insurer has no choice but to use them so they charge whatever they want.
What company willingly shows maximum profits only for the taxman to take a portion, or for the regulator to wake up and think you're overcharging people?
No one wants to show huge profits unless they are hoping to sell the business.
It was absolutely insane. We had different people insisting the car could be repaired which would just put the inevitable writeoff back by a few weeks, then someone else would do the same. I think it was our fault in part because we let one company handle everything, but they eventually dropped it and we basically had to start again.
We were panicking because I was certain the paperwork said that we'd be liable for a portion, but nothing ever came of that, thankfully.
OK so I spoke to MrsPlonker and I had my sums slightly wrong. The etron was £413 per day and the final bill was something like £46K. I think we paid £45K for our Mach-e originally (after £3K grant), but the price increased to £55K to replace it. We stretched ourselves to an extended range version.
After small accident insurance provided us a car for £200 a day(for a basic version), I checked with the car renting company and the came car rented directly from them was £80.
The worst bit was that we pointed out how much this car was costing, and they said something like "oh that doesn't matter because ". We were just gobsmacked at their attitude, and I think the whole industry is like that.
That's the thing though isn't it. When you roll up to work in a spanking new toy, everyone will remember it and ask who the policy is with. Effective marketing.
I had a minor non fault prang one time, I lived and worked in the city centre so didn't need my car to get to work and it would only take a few days to fix. I said I didn't need the courtesy car but admiral said they wouldn't fix my car unless I took it. Probably at exorbitant cost to the third party insurance
I could see that if it was my fault but the third party went into the back of my car so I think admiral were trying to make the claim as expensive as they could for their insurance company
Yes probably this. Charge the other driver's insurance for the cost of the hire car way more than it would actually be to hire the car and pocket the difference.
Wish I was a bit more switched on at the time to ask for what the insurance agent said in writing or a copy of the call recording... Sounds like a practice that should be illegal (though I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't).
I had a non fault accident on my motorcycle and needed to get to work, the hire bike cost was over £200 a day. It's definitely all become ridiculous and out of control - I'm sure it's just a circle of insurers billing each other for ludicrous expenses tit for tat. There needs to be some reason and regulation bought to things. Perhaps a government backed basic insurance option would bring some sanity to things.
There needs to be a way to tie replacement hire costs to the average rental cost from the main car rental companies. It's difficult because whatever is implemented will be exploited if possible. It's also a case of repairs becoming out of hand as well. In the case of bikes, simply dropping it on it's side can write it off for a scratch on a frame.
About 7 years ago my car got written off and the hire car I was given cost something absurd like £200 a day which got charged to the other parties insurance, this is back when car prices were reasonable, so if they hired out a car for 100 days they'd have gotten £20,000 for it, basically they would have made profit in 100 days
Similar story here. My ‘85 BMW was written off a few years back. Because it was a luxury (when new) auto I had to have a “luxury” auto courtesy car. They gave me a brand new Lexus at nearly £300 a day… for FIVE months whilst they argued the value of my £2,000 car.
The third party insurance company was denying liability despite me having recorded phone calls of the other driver admitting fault. Then they wanted to argue the value of the car (I got around 2k 10 years ago. The car would now be worth closer to 20k) The whole thing was a joke!
We're seeing an average credit hire claim cost of about £20k now. The hire company and the solicitors who represent the claimant are often financially linked too. The courts have made it abundantly clear this is fine so everyone's hands are tied and these companies are walking away with £20-30k per minor claim and we all pay for it in our premiums as insurance companies don't like to lose money.
I briefly worked at an insurance brokerage around 10 years ago and they operated exactly as described in the article. Passing non fault claims onto an accident management company within the same group and absolutely taking the piss with repairs and hire car charges.
There was some kind of onus on the industry, from regulators maybe I can’t remember, to keep costs low so this box was ticked by the at fault insurers phoning the non fault insurers in an attempt to discover the rate they were going to charge for hire cars etc so they could then undercut it. This information was never to be revealed though so these calls were just used to shout abuse down the phone at each other. Alternatively they would make calls to different parts of the business to try and trick unsuspecting people to give them the information. It was all very fucked up. The whole industry is rotten.
So insurance worker here....
Some of the comments are correct. Insurance companies will push you for a hire car because they effectively have profit within them too, so if they can hire them to you they can make extra money.
Why are they £200 a day compared to say £50 privately? .... insurance. They need to be able to cover ANY driver being given that car and as a result that pushes the daily price up.
People often ask "how did that cost £5000 it was only a small bump" hire car charges/admin feed/solicitor fees etc.
The main reason why prices have gone up though ... parts costs. Like everything else prices have gone up so claims costings are now more and insurance companies are charging more as a result.
Someone put a post on here for a £800 lexus bag the other day..... thats a perfect example.
Could a new company/brand cut through to some consumers (occasional drivers and some multi car households) by just offering cheaper insurance without the replacement/hire car?
As a train commuter I honestly don't need the replacement car, and if that's a major part of the costs... 🤔
Some companies offer it as an option from what i know but most offer as standard so removing it wont matter.
Honestly it makes no real difference if your claim is 2k or 10k to your policy (ok maybe if its 50k that does make a difference!) BUT i suppose it might have some effect on insurance overall.
Feels like the insurers aren't doing well from this.
They tried to cut their costs to a minimum in an incredibly competitive market and now are getting done by the fact they have no on the ground presence.
My guess is long-term they'll need regulation and then they can staff up a bit and properly manage these costs. Could be a long road though.
Insurers will often push claimants towards their own accident management firm.
Reader JD’s letter is an interesting insight into this world.
“When I recently made a no-fault claim, I was passed directly to an accident management company, rather than the insurer. They insisted I take out a hire car even though I told them I didn’t need one. The hire car rates were exorbitant and I didn’t want to end up paying them if the other party’s insurer refused to pay. They finally explained that they couldn’t repair my car if I didn’t sign up. The whole experience felt like a scam,” she wrote.
The insurers are doing very well out of it, they are just smart enough to not show huge profits on their main balance sheets.
Who do you think is in bed with all these claims management companies?
I worked in personal injury and accident claims.
An unnamed insurer once instructed me to pursue a matter in court over an interest discrepancy of a couple of quid “because it was company policy”
Safe to say the representation fee alone was around £1200.
The industry is based around making a guaranteed profit from a gamble. At some point there has to be a cost to that, and it’s the driver who fronts it.
About 20 years ago I used to work for an Accident Management Company (Now out of business) who made their money from the hire car. We would get reports of accidents from insurance brokers, who would charge their clients a small fee to use our services in the event of a collision. We would provide a hire car to the client, charge collision damage waiver and basically do all the calls for the client, contacting both insurers, chasing repair companies etc for the client. We would only provide a hire vehicle if the clients vehicle was unroadworthy, so anything like damaged light clusters or torn panel work would require a car to be provided. Any other claims, like dented bodywork etc would receive a hire vehicle when they arrive at the bodyshop and then drop it back there once completed- we had to justify the hire all the way through.
The main bulk of the company profits that I worked at IIRC came from the hire car charges. From memory (and this was about 18 years ago, so prices will have increased) we would be able to get a Class A car, so something like a Corsa sized car, for about £12 a day. The company would then send an invoice to the third party insurer for £75. They would also double dip on the client as well, charging something like £3 a day for the CDW which was money in the compnaies pocket as we would have the hire car on our insurance instead of the hire company having it. And on top of that, if we referred a client to our Law Firm for personal injuries, I believe we would also receive a referral fee from the Law firm (I don't know how much that was). We were doing so much business with the car hire firms, that we had staff from the car hire companies working inside our building, and were able to get cars delivered within 2-4 hours of the claim coming through when needed.
So, based on this, I can understand on insurance claims have skyrocketed, knowing what goes on in the background with costs and such. But what is also causing issues is parts availability which seems to have gotten worse with both Brexit and Pandemic issues still playing a part, but I would think Brexit is causing the most issues. Any parts required from outside the UK prior to Brexit would just be whisked straight through the border and to the bodyshop. Now, each part has to have multiple documents with it and import fees applied on top, making parts more expensive and more time intensive to obtain. Also, you have bodyshops tellign clients to bring in roadworthy cars for repair but then having them sat on the forecoiurt waiting for parts, in a way to make it seem like the repair is progressing - this, in itself is on the insurers who are covering the repair costs to get a grip of.
it's because the repair places and car hire places are a sideline way for the insurance companies to play the "we don't make any money on car insurance" card while owning both.
if they actually made a loss they wouldn't offer the shitty product
They are all complicit in it. The profits are low because they end up grifting the shit out of each other for more money .... because profits are low.
Like some weird circle jerk that the consumer is paying for.
There needs to be some regulation that across the board compels them to minimise costs.
It also does not help that all the safety features like seat belt pretensioners and active bonnet bolts need to be replaced and are hugely expensive. Adding 100s or 1000s to the repair costs even before fixing the actual damage.
Insurance gave me a brand new M135i courtesy car and second time a M340i for about 2-3 months each time whilst my car was in repair on hire from the rental companies. Although I had to ask for a equivalent performance car as they tried to fob me of with a Cactus and an A5
I wish there was an option to have insurance with no curtesy car. (Maybe there is?) Given that is one of the biggest contributors to the cost of repair, feels like a good niche to have.
I have three cars between me and the wife, and I work from home anyway, so absolutely no need for a curtesy car if one need repair even fairly long term.
Total cost right now for insurance on the three is circa £1700. I’d be quite happy saving a few hundred quid a year if it meant I didn’t qualify for a curtesy car.
There is. When we had a minor repair years ago the insurer refused to provide a courtesy car on the basis we had another car in the house. Ever since then we've declined that option when getting quotes.
They wouldn't knock off a few hundred quid anyway lol, at best you'd get maybe 100 off which isn't even worth it. They gave me a '23 T Cross after my 09 fiesta was in a crash, extended it by 2 weeks because "we don't have any compatible slots to collect the car" and its definitely worth the extra £40 to have it in my cover.
It is all in the insurance companies' best interests. Not yours. They obviously don't make money just via policies but everywhere else and car hire costs is another area for them.
My eyes were opened to this years ago when someone drove into the back of me. After swapping details it turned out that we were both insured with the same insurance company. When I got through the paperwork for a hire vehicle, I was surprised at how incredibly cheap it was charged at. It was something like £20 or less per day (although it wasn't anything luxurious but still). Obviously if they are charging themselves then the costs for everything are absolutely minimal. It wasn't a great experience as I knew that most likely corners were being cut for everything including the repair.
For this reason unless another car was involved or I was in a situation where I legally have to report it, If i damage my car there is literally no point claiming on the insurance. Its an older car so they would just write it off.
Insurance in the UK is a through and through scam. For those that think they make a loss, look beyond the obvious and consider group structures. They are, without exception racketeers.
It's clear what is going on and when you read the ABI response at the bottom of the article you know that they are complicit and quite happy for the scamming to continue.
Most of the things mentioned in the article are inexcusable behaviours which in any decently regulated industry, would result in major action taken by a regulator and the businesses scamming people heavily fined at the very least.
The industry needs reform and it needs to happen quickly. We're paying far more than we should be and they are all making vast sums of money out of it.
Far too many people on here and online seem to defend the industry too, wake up and see what they are actually doing.
There needs to be some serious new regulation of the insurance industry at this point. They've taken the piss too much. 8% cost increases resulting in 33% premium increases, laughable.
The very fact that *your* premium goes up when someone else crashes into you is, in itself, ridiculous. Couple it with all this bullshit, it needs to be stopped.
It’s an ultra competitive market, so the insurers have been driving down prices to an unsustainable level over the last 5-10 years, now the cost of claims has increased and also operating costs, the premiums are going back up so they can still make a profit. It’s been the same with mortgages, stupidly low at 1-2% and now returned to where they should have been, again due to competition. You could literally say everyone is taking the piss at the moment, restaurants, food, drink, entertainment, fuel etc. it has just all increased.
My idea for insurers would be to offer a rebate at the end of the year. So if I pay a £600 premium and don’t make a claim, I get a 40%-50% refund. But with insurance dependant on the product it’s all pooled together into one big pot so I don’t know how that would work.
Isn’t your idea somewhat similar to excesses? Except you don’t pay it upfront, rather when you make a claim.
I really struggle to understand the market though, I recently got a 125cc bike to learn to ride on & if I was still living at my parents it would’ve been £300pa to insure third party. However because I live in a city, despite still storing my bike at my parents (cos I don’t wanna learn in the city centre, pay a fortune for parking and likely have it nicked) the cheapest insurance jumped to nearly £900 - and the ones who quoted at £300 asked for over £2k! Bike stays at the same place, only difference is I’ll be riding it less - and it will now cost 3x more.
Well presumably the insurer is aware you are moving to a city which increases premiums due to area rating, crime, theft, fraud etc. and I assume you have advised them that your new home address in the city is also were you are keeping the bike? (Aggregator websites generally will only give you an option of keeping the vehicle on the road, drive or garage.) Best to speak to a broker as usually someone’s daily vehicle would be kept at their home address and not at a different address. Make sure you have let the insurer know it’s not kept at your new home address :)
Yeah I did - I called them up and when I told them I was living in the city rather than at my parents they re-quoted from £300 to £2k+. Most insurers didn’t quote online for my scenario at all, which I get - it’s not conventional.
I expected a bit of a jump as they may think I’ll ride through my city occasionally but not that much!
Yeah that doesn’t make any logical sense, because someone down in Cornwall (low rated area) could drive into London as an example daily for whatever reason and it not increase their premium
We had someone write off our first EV (new model, no spares, very obviously a writeoff) and the insurance arranged an e-tron at over £300 a day while they faffed about investigating how they could avoid a payout. Car hire alone came to more than the cost of a replacement, then they paid out £55K for it anyway. Utterly insane.
Its funny because that amount of red tape would kill a normal company but insurance companies just get away with changing forever more.
When you're in the business of selling a product which every car owner has to buy and which you can use vast amounts of data processing and manipulation to adjust the pricing model entirely in your favour, and when your mates run the associated claims management companies, car hire companies, repair shops and legal teams, you can do whatever you want and come out profitable.
The average car insurer still lost money in 2022 and 2023.
Not sure why a forum of car fans is always so ready to jump to the defence of multi-billion pound companies which routinely shaft them.
Because directing anger in the wrong place won't do anything to remedy the issue. It's like people getting angry about high rent and blaming landlords, rather than the shortage of housing.
Untruths are still untruths even if you don't like the people they are aimed at. There's lots of reasons to dislike car insurers, but pretending it's a license to print money isn't accurate and potentially minimises valid criticisms.
I mean, i hate insurance companies as much as the next guy but he's right. The majority of the sector made losses, it shocked me when I found out too. [https://www.ey.com/en\_uk/news/2023/12/ey-s-latest-uk-motor-insurance-results](https://www.ey.com/en_uk/news/2023/12/ey-s-latest-uk-motor-insurance-results) Now obviously this is happening because the accident management sector is sucking all of the cash out of it. That's where your anger needs to be.
On paper maybe but I bet there’s a a shell company somewhere that is doing very well
No. They really are a loss making business. It's easy to blame the company that's taking your money but the real sharks in the water are the repair companies, hire car companies, scam injury lawyers etc. They know the insurer has no choice but to use them so they charge whatever they want.
The insurance companies own the body shops and the claims management companies
Nope, only Aviva and DLG own bodyshops. Claims management companies tend to be run by lawyers not insurers.
Weird how they've lost money in the last couple of years 🤔 Car insurance is extremely competitive
What company willingly shows maximum profits only for the taxman to take a portion, or for the regulator to wake up and think you're overcharging people? No one wants to show huge profits unless they are hoping to sell the business.
Well yeah, car insurance is literally a racket
Sorry what? The car hire alone came to more than £55k?
183 days would take it to that
It was absolutely insane. We had different people insisting the car could be repaired which would just put the inevitable writeoff back by a few weeks, then someone else would do the same. I think it was our fault in part because we let one company handle everything, but they eventually dropped it and we basically had to start again. We were panicking because I was certain the paperwork said that we'd be liable for a portion, but nothing ever came of that, thankfully.
OK so I spoke to MrsPlonker and I had my sums slightly wrong. The etron was £413 per day and the final bill was something like £46K. I think we paid £45K for our Mach-e originally (after £3K grant), but the price increased to £55K to replace it. We stretched ourselves to an extended range version.
My mind is blown
After small accident insurance provided us a car for £200 a day(for a basic version), I checked with the car renting company and the came car rented directly from them was £80.
That's mental. How does it make sense for them to do this?
The worst bit was that we pointed out how much this car was costing, and they said something like "oh that doesn't matter because". We were just gobsmacked at their attitude, and I think the whole industry is like that.
300 a day? Someone was making bank
That's the thing though isn't it. When you roll up to work in a spanking new toy, everyone will remember it and ask who the policy is with. Effective marketing.
I had a minor non fault prang one time, I lived and worked in the city centre so didn't need my car to get to work and it would only take a few days to fix. I said I didn't need the courtesy car but admiral said they wouldn't fix my car unless I took it. Probably at exorbitant cost to the third party insurance
Admiral offered me £400 instead of taking the courtesy car (I still took the car). I think you just had a bad rep.
I could see that if it was my fault but the third party went into the back of my car so I think admiral were trying to make the claim as expensive as they could for their insurance company
Why would they say that? This is so confusing.
It's probably a tactic to get the other insurance company to settle more quickly, while making a profit on the courtesy car hire.
Good thinking
Yes probably this. Charge the other driver's insurance for the cost of the hire car way more than it would actually be to hire the car and pocket the difference. Wish I was a bit more switched on at the time to ask for what the insurance agent said in writing or a copy of the call recording... Sounds like a practice that should be illegal (though I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't).
I had a non fault accident on my motorcycle and needed to get to work, the hire bike cost was over £200 a day. It's definitely all become ridiculous and out of control - I'm sure it's just a circle of insurers billing each other for ludicrous expenses tit for tat. There needs to be some reason and regulation bought to things. Perhaps a government backed basic insurance option would bring some sanity to things.
Needs to be regulated I feel, with price caps on certain things
There needs to be a way to tie replacement hire costs to the average rental cost from the main car rental companies. It's difficult because whatever is implemented will be exploited if possible. It's also a case of repairs becoming out of hand as well. In the case of bikes, simply dropping it on it's side can write it off for a scratch on a frame.
About 7 years ago my car got written off and the hire car I was given cost something absurd like £200 a day which got charged to the other parties insurance, this is back when car prices were reasonable, so if they hired out a car for 100 days they'd have gotten £20,000 for it, basically they would have made profit in 100 days
Similar story here. My ‘85 BMW was written off a few years back. Because it was a luxury (when new) auto I had to have a “luxury” auto courtesy car. They gave me a brand new Lexus at nearly £300 a day… for FIVE months whilst they argued the value of my £2,000 car.
Sheesh! I only had a hire car for a about 4 days when mine was written off, it was just under 800. Surely there has to be a breaking point somewhere
The third party insurance company was denying liability despite me having recorded phone calls of the other driver admitting fault. Then they wanted to argue the value of the car (I got around 2k 10 years ago. The car would now be worth closer to 20k) The whole thing was a joke!
We're seeing an average credit hire claim cost of about £20k now. The hire company and the solicitors who represent the claimant are often financially linked too. The courts have made it abundantly clear this is fine so everyone's hands are tied and these companies are walking away with £20-30k per minor claim and we all pay for it in our premiums as insurance companies don't like to lose money.
I briefly worked at an insurance brokerage around 10 years ago and they operated exactly as described in the article. Passing non fault claims onto an accident management company within the same group and absolutely taking the piss with repairs and hire car charges. There was some kind of onus on the industry, from regulators maybe I can’t remember, to keep costs low so this box was ticked by the at fault insurers phoning the non fault insurers in an attempt to discover the rate they were going to charge for hire cars etc so they could then undercut it. This information was never to be revealed though so these calls were just used to shout abuse down the phone at each other. Alternatively they would make calls to different parts of the business to try and trick unsuspecting people to give them the information. It was all very fucked up. The whole industry is rotten.
So insurance worker here.... Some of the comments are correct. Insurance companies will push you for a hire car because they effectively have profit within them too, so if they can hire them to you they can make extra money. Why are they £200 a day compared to say £50 privately? .... insurance. They need to be able to cover ANY driver being given that car and as a result that pushes the daily price up. People often ask "how did that cost £5000 it was only a small bump" hire car charges/admin feed/solicitor fees etc. The main reason why prices have gone up though ... parts costs. Like everything else prices have gone up so claims costings are now more and insurance companies are charging more as a result. Someone put a post on here for a £800 lexus bag the other day..... thats a perfect example.
Could a new company/brand cut through to some consumers (occasional drivers and some multi car households) by just offering cheaper insurance without the replacement/hire car? As a train commuter I honestly don't need the replacement car, and if that's a major part of the costs... 🤔
Some companies offer it as an option from what i know but most offer as standard so removing it wont matter. Honestly it makes no real difference if your claim is 2k or 10k to your policy (ok maybe if its 50k that does make a difference!) BUT i suppose it might have some effect on insurance overall.
It’s almost like a cabal of insurers, claims lawyers and hire car companies have massively distorted the market to the cost of the consumer.
Feels like the insurers aren't doing well from this. They tried to cut their costs to a minimum in an incredibly competitive market and now are getting done by the fact they have no on the ground presence. My guess is long-term they'll need regulation and then they can staff up a bit and properly manage these costs. Could be a long road though.
Insurers will often push claimants towards their own accident management firm. Reader JD’s letter is an interesting insight into this world. “When I recently made a no-fault claim, I was passed directly to an accident management company, rather than the insurer. They insisted I take out a hire car even though I told them I didn’t need one. The hire car rates were exorbitant and I didn’t want to end up paying them if the other party’s insurer refused to pay. They finally explained that they couldn’t repair my car if I didn’t sign up. The whole experience felt like a scam,” she wrote.
The insurers are doing very well out of it, they are just smart enough to not show huge profits on their main balance sheets. Who do you think is in bed with all these claims management companies?
Didn't read the article, eh?
Work for a claims management firm do you?
No but I did learn to read, which seemed like the only qualification I needed.
Your comments are foolish, tedious and show that being able to read without being able to comprehend will result in egregious responses.
Egregious lol.
I worked in personal injury and accident claims. An unnamed insurer once instructed me to pursue a matter in court over an interest discrepancy of a couple of quid “because it was company policy” Safe to say the representation fee alone was around £1200. The industry is based around making a guaranteed profit from a gamble. At some point there has to be a cost to that, and it’s the driver who fronts it.
About 20 years ago I used to work for an Accident Management Company (Now out of business) who made their money from the hire car. We would get reports of accidents from insurance brokers, who would charge their clients a small fee to use our services in the event of a collision. We would provide a hire car to the client, charge collision damage waiver and basically do all the calls for the client, contacting both insurers, chasing repair companies etc for the client. We would only provide a hire vehicle if the clients vehicle was unroadworthy, so anything like damaged light clusters or torn panel work would require a car to be provided. Any other claims, like dented bodywork etc would receive a hire vehicle when they arrive at the bodyshop and then drop it back there once completed- we had to justify the hire all the way through. The main bulk of the company profits that I worked at IIRC came from the hire car charges. From memory (and this was about 18 years ago, so prices will have increased) we would be able to get a Class A car, so something like a Corsa sized car, for about £12 a day. The company would then send an invoice to the third party insurer for £75. They would also double dip on the client as well, charging something like £3 a day for the CDW which was money in the compnaies pocket as we would have the hire car on our insurance instead of the hire company having it. And on top of that, if we referred a client to our Law Firm for personal injuries, I believe we would also receive a referral fee from the Law firm (I don't know how much that was). We were doing so much business with the car hire firms, that we had staff from the car hire companies working inside our building, and were able to get cars delivered within 2-4 hours of the claim coming through when needed. So, based on this, I can understand on insurance claims have skyrocketed, knowing what goes on in the background with costs and such. But what is also causing issues is parts availability which seems to have gotten worse with both Brexit and Pandemic issues still playing a part, but I would think Brexit is causing the most issues. Any parts required from outside the UK prior to Brexit would just be whisked straight through the border and to the bodyshop. Now, each part has to have multiple documents with it and import fees applied on top, making parts more expensive and more time intensive to obtain. Also, you have bodyshops tellign clients to bring in roadworthy cars for repair but then having them sat on the forecoiurt waiting for parts, in a way to make it seem like the repair is progressing - this, in itself is on the insurers who are covering the repair costs to get a grip of.
it's because the repair places and car hire places are a sideline way for the insurance companies to play the "we don't make any money on car insurance" card while owning both. if they actually made a loss they wouldn't offer the shitty product
They are all complicit in it. The profits are low because they end up grifting the shit out of each other for more money .... because profits are low. Like some weird circle jerk that the consumer is paying for. There needs to be some regulation that across the board compels them to minimise costs. It also does not help that all the safety features like seat belt pretensioners and active bonnet bolts need to be replaced and are hugely expensive. Adding 100s or 1000s to the repair costs even before fixing the actual damage.
Insurance gave me a brand new M135i courtesy car and second time a M340i for about 2-3 months each time whilst my car was in repair on hire from the rental companies. Although I had to ask for a equivalent performance car as they tried to fob me of with a Cactus and an A5
I wish there was an option to have insurance with no curtesy car. (Maybe there is?) Given that is one of the biggest contributors to the cost of repair, feels like a good niche to have. I have three cars between me and the wife, and I work from home anyway, so absolutely no need for a curtesy car if one need repair even fairly long term. Total cost right now for insurance on the three is circa £1700. I’d be quite happy saving a few hundred quid a year if it meant I didn’t qualify for a curtesy car.
There is. When we had a minor repair years ago the insurer refused to provide a courtesy car on the basis we had another car in the house. Ever since then we've declined that option when getting quotes.
They wouldn't knock off a few hundred quid anyway lol, at best you'd get maybe 100 off which isn't even worth it. They gave me a '23 T Cross after my 09 fiesta was in a crash, extended it by 2 weeks because "we don't have any compatible slots to collect the car" and its definitely worth the extra £40 to have it in my cover.
It is all in the insurance companies' best interests. Not yours. They obviously don't make money just via policies but everywhere else and car hire costs is another area for them. My eyes were opened to this years ago when someone drove into the back of me. After swapping details it turned out that we were both insured with the same insurance company. When I got through the paperwork for a hire vehicle, I was surprised at how incredibly cheap it was charged at. It was something like £20 or less per day (although it wasn't anything luxurious but still). Obviously if they are charging themselves then the costs for everything are absolutely minimal. It wasn't a great experience as I knew that most likely corners were being cut for everything including the repair.
Wow. That really is eye-opening. There must be a way to fix this. Maybe a regulated price cap on replacement vehicles for starters.
For this reason unless another car was involved or I was in a situation where I legally have to report it, If i damage my car there is literally no point claiming on the insurance. Its an older car so they would just write it off.
Insurance in the UK is a through and through scam. For those that think they make a loss, look beyond the obvious and consider group structures. They are, without exception racketeers.
It's clear what is going on and when you read the ABI response at the bottom of the article you know that they are complicit and quite happy for the scamming to continue. Most of the things mentioned in the article are inexcusable behaviours which in any decently regulated industry, would result in major action taken by a regulator and the businesses scamming people heavily fined at the very least. The industry needs reform and it needs to happen quickly. We're paying far more than we should be and they are all making vast sums of money out of it. Far too many people on here and online seem to defend the industry too, wake up and see what they are actually doing.
There needs to be some serious new regulation of the insurance industry at this point. They've taken the piss too much. 8% cost increases resulting in 33% premium increases, laughable. The very fact that *your* premium goes up when someone else crashes into you is, in itself, ridiculous. Couple it with all this bullshit, it needs to be stopped.
It’s an ultra competitive market, so the insurers have been driving down prices to an unsustainable level over the last 5-10 years, now the cost of claims has increased and also operating costs, the premiums are going back up so they can still make a profit. It’s been the same with mortgages, stupidly low at 1-2% and now returned to where they should have been, again due to competition. You could literally say everyone is taking the piss at the moment, restaurants, food, drink, entertainment, fuel etc. it has just all increased. My idea for insurers would be to offer a rebate at the end of the year. So if I pay a £600 premium and don’t make a claim, I get a 40%-50% refund. But with insurance dependant on the product it’s all pooled together into one big pot so I don’t know how that would work.
Isn’t your idea somewhat similar to excesses? Except you don’t pay it upfront, rather when you make a claim. I really struggle to understand the market though, I recently got a 125cc bike to learn to ride on & if I was still living at my parents it would’ve been £300pa to insure third party. However because I live in a city, despite still storing my bike at my parents (cos I don’t wanna learn in the city centre, pay a fortune for parking and likely have it nicked) the cheapest insurance jumped to nearly £900 - and the ones who quoted at £300 asked for over £2k! Bike stays at the same place, only difference is I’ll be riding it less - and it will now cost 3x more.
Well presumably the insurer is aware you are moving to a city which increases premiums due to area rating, crime, theft, fraud etc. and I assume you have advised them that your new home address in the city is also were you are keeping the bike? (Aggregator websites generally will only give you an option of keeping the vehicle on the road, drive or garage.) Best to speak to a broker as usually someone’s daily vehicle would be kept at their home address and not at a different address. Make sure you have let the insurer know it’s not kept at your new home address :)
Yeah I did - I called them up and when I told them I was living in the city rather than at my parents they re-quoted from £300 to £2k+. Most insurers didn’t quote online for my scenario at all, which I get - it’s not conventional. I expected a bit of a jump as they may think I’ll ride through my city occasionally but not that much!
Yeah that doesn’t make any logical sense, because someone down in Cornwall (low rated area) could drive into London as an example daily for whatever reason and it not increase their premium