Why is my car insurance so expensive?
We all hate having to pay insurance, whether it’s on our homes, pets or cars. The thing is, while it’s optional on most things, you get no choice when it comes to your car. And what’s worse, car insurance is never cheap – but why does it have to be quite so expensive? The simple answer is that insurance companies claim they don’t make much profit out of car policies, even at current prices. Many supposedly run at a loss, the business subsidised by more lucrative insurance areas such as home cover; here’s why they reckon it’s not profitable and why your car insurance costs so much. Fraud Too many people think that defrauding their insurer is a victimless crime. After all, claiming for whiplash in the event of a rear-end imapct is so easy. But everyone with an insurance policy ends up footing the bill so it’s far from a victimless crime. Whiplash claims are a particular problem as about 1,500 are filed every day in the UK – we’re way ahead of other European countries when it comes to making such claims. They all add up to a massive £2 billion-worth of payouts each year, which is enough to add £90 to the average car insurance premium. There’s also the spectre of cash-for-crash claims, in which collisions are staged so that claims can be made for personal injury. Nobody knows the scale of the problem but it’s reckoned this type of fraud adds around £44 each year to the typical insurance premium. Inefficiency The insurance industry isn’t always run as efficiently as it might be. It’s not unusual for a car to be scraped with just some light remedial work required to fix things. Yet the car’s owner could end up with a hire vehicle for weeks while an assessor does their job and the car languishes in a compound waiting for half a day’s work to be done to. Somebody has to pay for all those weeks of car hire, and you can guess who that is…