Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 24 Jan 2014:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like the latest round of car and van insurance rate drops are likely to be the last for quite some time.
Turns out that some research from a leading insurance comparison website discovered that the last quarter of 2013 saw year-on-year rate drops of 12.5 per cent. This is fantastic news of course – especially since now the average comprehensive car insurance policy is only £644 – but this could easily be the last large downward trend in insurance rates for the foreseeable future.
Now for some classes of motorists this isn’t necessarily anything new. Younger drivers are quite used to insurers taking the piss out of them whenever they can, especially since it’s easier to give up an arm and a leg than it is to secure cover at a reasonable price if you’re under the age of 25 or so. Still, there was some hope that rates would continue to decline, especially for any younger Brits that drove a van for a living, but these hopes have more or less been dashed all to pieces after an independent report revealed that the competition between insurers – which had been driving premiums down in a price war – has leveled off.
That’s right – insurers have called a truce on their price war, set aside their differences, and banded together against their real enemy: all of us. Now that prices won’t slide downwards any more, insurers are quite happy – and their investors are just chuffed to bits. In fact, once news broke about the end of the price wars, stock prices for the major British insurers all rose – some as high as 5.6 per cent!
So in the end what does this mean for you and me? Well I think that it’s a safe bet to say that prices are likely to remain flat for the time being, which is better than nothing – and certainly better than having rates climb higher again! Still it’s disappointing to see the downward slide come to an end, especially since rates were so close to being acceptable for the first time since the credit crisis and resultant economic downturn. We’ll all just have to grin and bear it, I suppose!
