VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 31 OCT 2014:
Rates on car insurance and van insurance are creeping upwards – and if you’re a male motorist you’re likely to bear the brunt of the new price increases.
The party is most definitely over. The mad competition between insurers and brokers has finally resulted in an insurance marketplace that’s collapsing under its own attenuated weight, and now we’ve all got to deal with personal car insurance and commercial van insurance rates going up, up up into the stratosphere.
The AA has confirmed it; this week the venerable motoring organisation says that its latest price index shows rising prices. To be sure the AA only saw a measly £6 increase, but don’t forget that’s an average. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence out there that some classes of drivers – males especially – are getting the short and pointy end of the stick when it comes to rate increases.
A major insurance comparison site found that insurance prices for men have one up at almost double the rate of their female counterparts year-on-year. Research found an overall 3.2 per cent increase for male motorists, while females got away with a much more modest 1.8 per cent rate hike. So much for genderless insurance quotes, eh? It looks like the furore the European Court of Justice raised by banning the use of gender as a metric for determining insurance pricing has fallen flat on its face. Why am I not surprised in the least?
Honestly I don’t know what’s going to save the insurance industry. Whether it’s cracking down on fraud from insurance claims, the implementation of widespread telematics-based cover, or simply better regulation of an industry that’s best interests usually run at cross purposes to their customers, your guess is as good as mine. A combination of all three might do well to get insurance prices under control, but there’s always going to be a fly in the ointment or a spanner in the works somewhere or another. Insurers are out to make money, consumers are out to save as much as possible, and nothing is going to change that dynamic for a good, long time.
Well, maybe the advent of the driverless car. That might change things. Then again, what would the lads at Top Gear say about such an abomination? Not only that, but what would the White Van Man say about having his likelihood taken away from him thanks to a robotic Ford Transit making deliveries instead of him?