A bit like the pros and cons of EU membership, motor insurance, it seems, is simply too complicated for the average UK person to get their head around.
“Motor insurance too confusing”, pronounced a press release from insurance firm Co-op Insurance this week. And they’re not just making it up. They got researcher Atom Mick to ask 2,000 actual UK drivers, most of whom had little or no clue how motor insurance works.
Rather than making more of an effort to understand what they’re buying, 86% of drivers say motor insurance should be made more simple, so it doesn’t hurt their brains so much.
And, let’s face it, they’ve got a point. When we’re all so busy with social media and online shopping and catching up with all those telly box sets, who’s really got time to waste filling out long complicated application forms on confusing.com or some insurer’s website!
Here are some of things people don’t understand about motor insurance:
- How motor insurance premiums are calculated (51%)
- Why motor insurance premiums go up and down (43%)
- Why more expensive cars cost more to insure (36%)
More shockingly still 42% of motorists don’t even understand why they should have to pay more when other people make claims!
Luckily – given these disturbing revelations about how confusing everyone finds motor insurance – Co-op insurance is working on some revolutionary plans for making motor insurance easier to understand.
Although, it’s a bit of a con really, because, instead of actually making motor insurance simpler, which is clearly what everyone wants, they’re just trying to help people understand how bad-old over-complicated motor insurance works.
For example, they’ve produced a series of three videos designed to explain, yawn, how motor insurance pricing works.
The first shows how 25% of your premium goes on compensating all the people your insurer’s policyholders have injured, 20% goes on repairing/replacing all of the cars and/or property belonging to other people that their policyholders have damaged, 20% goes on repairing/replacing all their policyholders’ own damaged or stolen cars and/or property, leaving just 35% of your premium cash to pay for things like operating costs, IPT and ‘so on’.
To be honest, it’s hard to imagine surging public interest will be crashing the site hosting the Co-op’s educational videos any time soon.
Underwriters might enjoy them though. Always good to gain a new level of insight into such arcane matters.
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