Having thought about it for a bit, the Compare the Market Authority (CMA) (formerly known as the Competitor’s Companion) has announced a fresh set of cunning plans for making car insurance cheaper by cracking down on bad stuff.
Insurers getting charged too much and/or making too much money from the over-priced provision of hire cars will soon be a thing of the past. Inflated hire charges cost consumers £180m a year, the CMA claims, perhaps confusing reduced costs for insurers with reduced premiums for consumers.
If the CMA’s sums are right, however, new car hire price controls (so-called CHPCs) could save decent ordinary motor insurance customers as much as 10p a year on their policy purchase premium payments, provided, of course, insurers pass on any savings in full.
Good thing too, commenting leading garlicky insurance giant Aksa, who have ruffled more than a few industry feathers recently by stating publicly that they no longer wish to make money from practices that are likely to harm or injure the persons or interests of its customers.
Some other insurers were less sure, pausing perhaps to calculate whether car hire charge inflation is making or losing them money on balance.
Credit hire firms described the CMA’s proposals as insane, draconian and not fair, insisting that crash victims will now be made to suffer needlessly as they drive around in tatty little replacement vehicles ill befitting their station and expectations in life.
Analysts predicted insurer profits would tumble with this latest bid to force them back on making money from underwriting, recommending that anyone with shares in insurers writing motor business should sell them all at once.
Amongst the CMA’s other proposals were plans to provide some competition for comparison sites by putting an end to so-called most flavoured nation agreements, whereby insurers have to promise not to compete with comparison sites. Add-ons, predictably are also in the firing line, as are mysteriously formulated no-claims bonuses and protected NCB deals.
The CMA will now take a brief summer break – while affected parties consider these new proposals and respond with their views how they should be modified to safeguard the basic rights of decent honest policyholders and/or their own vested interests – before coming back and making its mind up in September.
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