Photo credit: jcrakow
Car insurance premiums keep rising, according to a report. In fact, according to the official figures the average policy costs over £1,000 a year.
Can this be true? I don’t doubt the good people at AA Insurance who carried out the study but that seems like an incredibly high price to pay. It’s been a while since I insured a car in the UK or worked in the UK insurance industry but I seem to remember paying about £400 as a fairly young driver a few years back.
When I worked for an insurance company the premiums would vary widely but anything over £1000 would have made our eye goggle. During idle moments we would run a competition to see who could invent the most expensive quote and I don’t remember getting more than a few grand for an 18 year old driving a sports car, with points on his licence and as many modifications as you could shake a stick at.
The Scots Pay Less
It seems that prices have soared (they always soar, don’t they. They never just go up) most in Liverpool and Greater Manchester, while the Scots have it best. It also seems that the huge number of whiplash claims being seen across the country are part of the reason for the increases, along with alleged scams.
According to Simon Douglas, the insurance market is in “turmoil” and as director of AA Insurance he should know. If we go back to the whiplash claims for a second, it seems that insurers paid out more £2 billion on them in 2011. This is another figure which made me swoon slightly. It has been said that the amount of these claims has added £90 to the cost of the average insurance policy.
Car insurers now want to get access to more information on applicants, to avoid fraudulent applications. I remember something like this coming in just as I left the industry but it was pretty rubbish as it involved faxes getting sent all over the place by a woman called Janice so I guess that it is time to update it and give Janice a break.