Insurance

[Spike]

Morning all, renewed my insurance yesterday and the cheapest I could find is nearly double last years from £230 to £430! has something happend in the insurance world ?

 

[Rob Cowell]

Seen lots of people saying the same. Land Rover insurance seems to have gone crazy. Mine increased 60% this year with the same insurer I've used for the last 15 years. Luckily for me could get it for about 5% more via a compare site. Other car went about 10% but it was under £200 to start with and I couldn't be bothered looking around. I'd expect 10% or so with inflation, I can only think claims are up. The risk engines are pretty sophisticated, they're only jumping like this because bigger payouts are expected. I don't think car insurance makes wild profit.

 

[Tractionman]

I suppose it is much too early yet to wonder if EV claims have any impact, or if insurance companies are pulling the trigger early to boost their coffers in anticipation ?

 

[Towpack]

It's due to the rise in the cost of spare parts and repairs, at least that's the spiel I was thrown when mine went up £70 although I did get it down to £30 with some spiel of my own. My bike insurance (2 bike policy) came
down £114 although I did have a total loss theft claim in 2021 which pushed the price up £139 last year so quite pleased with that.

 

[Tractionman]

I blame Brexit, lol.

Mine was up £20 back in July.

 

[Spike]

It was a bit of a shock, clean licence, endless no claims, parked on a drive and only around 4/5 k miles a year, so on and so on, I might try an independent to see if it makes any difference.

 

[Tractionman]

Like you Spike, I was staggered, as I have similar track record as you.
Try NFU, it made a over £100 difference when I changed a few years ago, and still a good deal now compared with my old (broker) insurance company.
As an independant insurance company rather than a broker, it cuts out the middleman and you get a dividend each year (not much) as well as lower premiums.
There's loads of threads on here about insurance companies/premiums, etc.

 

[Spike]

Like you Spike, I was staggered, as I have similar track record as you.
Try NFU, it made a over £100 difference when I changed a few years ago, and still a good deal now compared with my old (broker) insurance company.
As an independant insurance company rather than a broker, it cuts out the middleman and you get a dividend each year (not much) as well as lower premiums.
There's loads of threads on here about insurance companies/premiums, etc.

Thanks for that Tractionman, I will give them a call later.

 

[Gary Stockton]

Been with NFU for ages, highly recommended

 

[Tractionman]

Just had my renewal for January, (got the date wrong in a previous post) with NFU.
They've previously been very good to what I was used to, but this renewal is almost exactly £100 more for ffs !!
Reasons apparently are higher costs of repair materials, parts availability on older cars and waiting for same, therefore longer periods of courtesy cars, higher costs on repair/write offs on, yes, you guessed it - good old EV's (so we're all paying for them now) and my age.
The older you get, especially over 70, the more they load it, irrespective of your driving history, so I/we're paying for the other reckless bastards of other ages.
Insurance Premium Tax has risen, another scam by the government, collected for them by businesses just like vat, despite paying high RFL, which doesn't even pay for upkeep of roads.
Don't get me started !

 

[Rob Cowell]

The older you get, especially over 70, the more they load it, irrespective of your driving history, so I/we're paying for the other reckless bastards of other ages.

Over 70s have more expensive claims than 50-70s. You're not paying for other ages. Your paying for the history of people your age. Driving history helps, but insurance companies can see 70+ in general cost them more so they are going to factor that in to quote generation.

 

[Tractionman]

Odd how my premiums have been a decent level over 70 until now.
Younger age groups have higher premiums too because of more expensive claims, not just older, and claims to insurance companies in £££ get spread across the board to an extent to ensure their massive profits, so certain sectors/ages seem to help them achieve this rather than based on an individual drivers history.
In the older sector, based on your findings, it seems that a medical or 3 yearly license imposed at certain ages, means /does nothing to keep those that pose a greater risk off the road regardless, and the general standard of driving/accidents by many twats in the 'in between ages' costs everyone incuding you and me.
Its not just those who have accidents that are penalised, but that's how they work their system, higher premiums for accident prone and higher premiums for the rest as a result of it.

 

[Rob Cowell]

Odd how my premiums have been a decent level over 70 until now.

I think most people's premiums went up this year due to inflation, and some of the other points you mentioned around parts availability. How much was that, and how much is anything to do with getting older is probably not possible for any of us to say. Until a couple of years ago I was working with insurance companies' risk software, and I know a little bit, but exactly how that software is used is a very closely guarded secret - the art is in creating a quote that will cover payouts but be commercially enticing to customers and leave some profit. Even if I knew the detail I would have had to have signed an NDA, and certainly wouldn't be telling anyone, especialy with my name on the post! Maybe an anonymous data scientist in the group would care to share

Younger age groups have higher premiums too because of more expensive claims, not just older, and claims to insurance companies in £££ get spread across the board to an extent to ensure their massive profits, so certain sectors/ages seem to help them achieve this rather than based on an individual drivers history.

Not sure how massive the profits are in motor insurance. They always swore it wasn't much when it came to renewing software licenses And people who sell software licenses definitely read company accounts to understand how much money might be floating around.

There may be some aggregating of policy costs across age groups (the way people is grouped is done on a lot more factors than just age, but I think age is significant), but I have never seen this mentioned in risk calculation. It may be something that was getting applied after any part I had in the process. I don't think it is significant. You may know more?

Forecasting the probability of future events doesn't really work if you only observe one actor. Say we have 5 years of data about you and your crash record is 0,0,0,0,0. There's lots of ways we can estimate year 6, but the very simplest is the mean. Year 6 is (0+0+0+0+0)/5 = 0. So I can estimate you have 0% risk of crashing next year.

But I have this other driver, same age, same location, and their last five years is 0,0,0,0,1. Their mean is (0+0+0+0+1)/5 = 0.2. So I can estimate they have a 20% risk of crashing next year.

But also what I know is that just because you have no crashes for the last 4 years does not mean you won't ever have a crash. So I need to load some of this risk onto you. And the risk engines are clustering customers on lots and lots of factors, and aggregating the risks among customers who are members of the same cluster. But not, as far as I am aware, over different clusters (at least significantly).

Also, in reality no one estimates risk on mean. They use something like (but generally more sophisticated than) exponential smoothing where I care increasingly less about how you drive the longer ago it was, because most forecatsing models agree that the longer ago an event occured the less influence it has on what will happen next. It's why NCB makes a big (but decreasing) difference in the first 1-4 years, but then very little more.

TLDR; your individual driving history can only be a small part of any risk calculation.

In the older sector, based on your findings, it seems that a medical or 3 yearly license imposed at certain ages, means /does nothing to keep those that pose a greater risk off the road regardless, and the general standard of driving/accidents by many twats in the 'in between ages' costs everyone incuding you and me.

Those numbers are costs per claim. The medical and license restrictions may mean there are fewer risky people on the road. But those who are on the road and do have accidents cause larger claims. My guess would be there is more of a risk of injuring people which is generally what costs a lot of money. Much more than scraping your Bentley, for example.

Its not just those who have accidents that are penalised, but that's how they work their system, higher premiums for accident prone and higher premiums for the rest as a result of it.

If it was just those who had accidents who were "penalised" there would be no insurance. You'd just pay if you had an accident. Insurance is just aggregating your risk with others, and the way risk engines are built those others are people with similar characteristics to you, be that age, location, driving history, vehicle type, etc.

Lot of waffle really, but bottom line is that my understanding is that there is very little influence on your premium from idiot drivers 20+ years younger than you. It's not commercially viable for insurance companies to do that. It would only take one to disassociate the clusters and they would win a load of low risk business. Unless of course it's all a big price-fixing cabal *dons foil beret*.

 

[Spike]

Well it could be a lot worse belive it or not!! I have a couple of mates one with a 2010 3.6 TDV8 Range Rover and one with a 2011 4.4 TDV8 Range Rover and as they are both push button start, their insurance quotes recentley was £1300 and £1700!!!

 

[Grimbo]

Well it could be a lot worse belive it or not!! I have a couple of mates one with a 2010 3.6 TDV8 Range Rover and one with a 2011 4.4 TDV8 Range Rover and as they are both push button start, their insurance quotes recentley was £1300 and £1700!!!

And the vehicles themselves are only worth about double the premium with prices dropping fast....

 

[Tractionman]

Lots of info on there Rob, I sort of understand.

Agree, personal injuries involving 'ambulance chasers' (my description not yours) can be astronomical, far exceeding damage to property/vehicles. Crash for cash twats, or milking a situation.

What I don't understand is your logic about there being no insurance if those accident prone were penalised ?
If they had higher insurance premiums based on their poor driving history, that would alleviate some of the load on others with good history, just like those with drunk drivers have higher premiums or cannot get insurance.

Just paying if you had an accident as you state is ok-ish up to a point, maybe for a few hundred £, but it wouldn't happen for K's.
It happens of course, to keep the insurance company in the dark about history, and I understand why.
The age factor in risk calculation could be seen as a discriminatory, and although it may be mentioned verbally, no broker/company would put that in print.

Latest reasons, this time from Flux, - type of vehicle and big engine (Landcruiser 120 series) so the list (excuses) for risks is infinate, depending who is covering those risks, and of course assuming you are going to have a crash/claim, when you have never had one previously.
Massive profits/price fixing, nah - even fuel companies dont do that with government knowledge.

One thing is for sure, it ain't gonna get any better, so thinking of turning this driving lark in - I said that when Fishy hiked the rfl in his crusade to rid the country of polluting 4x4's and the like, while he uses private jets to get to meetings, lol.
BTW, I never scraped the Bentley once in my 100 year old driving career. (I think it was more than that), lol.