According to this week’s Insurance Times, stats boffins at leading stats boffineering boutique EMB believe they have uncovered a hitherto unsuspected link between cash for crash claims and rising insurance premiums.
String-haired karaoke queens Confused.com commissioned EMB (originally an abbreviation for Englishmen on Bicycles, we believe) to crunch some numbers and churn out the startling finding that there appears to be some kind of link between those postcodes with most increased premiums and those with the highest rates of C4C shenaniganry.
The Confused/EMB Motor Price Index puts Bradford top of the list with an outstanding 62% rise in comprehensive car insurance premiums in 2010. Astonishingly, Bradford also has a lot of C4Cing going on.
Mashing up the EMB MPI with the Insurance Fruit Bureau’s league table of C4C hotspots shows what EMB have ventured to describe as “a clear correlation.”
Insurers admit fraud is a problem, but only one of a range of reasons for putting premiums up, Insurance Times reports, and even EMP partner Dave Brown favours the sophisticatedly open-minded philosophical assumption that “nothing is definite.”
“The number of accidents with a bodily injury component is around three times higher in some areas of the country than others,” he notes. This is “undoubtedly driven by claims management companies,” he adds speculatively.
But “to what extent does fraudulent behaviour play a part?” Dave asks rhetorically. “I’ve got no data to confirm that, but I would not be surprised if there was a correlation.”
Frankly, nor would anybody else, Bankstone News rather supposes.
No responses yet