VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 26 DEC 2014:

New data for 2014 in total shows that car and van insurance rates fell for the year – but experts say don’t get used to the phenomenon.

The cost of motoring seems to go up and down like a child’s yo-yo toy, doesn’t it? Between the price of a litre of petrol and the constantly fluctuating car insurance premium prices we’re all subject to, it’s a wonder anyone has any money left over for anything else at the end of the year. Still, there’s good news for drivers, as an insurance comparison site just did some maths and came up with some cheerful figures: the average premium price dropped by more than 6 per cent over the course of 2014. Not only back, but that builds on the back of 2013’s 3.2 per cent drop and 2012’s 2.6 per cent decrease as well. Combine that with petrol prices trending downwards and there are some happy chappies out there when it comes to motoring costs!

Of course, nothing lasts forever – and industry analysts are already raining on our parade by warning how things are likely to take a turn for the worse in the New Year. Those premium prices might have bottomed out this December, as data shows averages were some 0.7 per cent higher than they were 12 months before that. In other words, it looks like the costs of annual cover is likely to begin trending upwards at least, though petrol prices are likely to remain low for a bit longer.

So why the roller coaster? The casualties of a price war amongst insurance companies, analysts say. Everyone’s been jockeying for position, and they’ve all been slashing their prices precipitously, only to suddenly realise they’ve cut back so far that they can’t sustain their business this way. This means prices are going to come up, up, up in the New Year.

However, you’ll still be likely to get a good deal if you switch providers soon. Insurers will likely leave their cut-rate premium prices for last and simply jack up the rates for their existing customers, as is their wont. When you start seeing higher prices for new customers, then you know we’ve arrived in the thick of it.

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 19 DEC 2014:

Well, it looks like there’s good news and there’s bad news when it comes to car insurance and van insurance costs in the UK. I hope you’re sitting down!

So here’s the bad news: a insurance comparison site recently found that comprehensive insurance costs went up last month. It wasn’t much – maybe around 0.3 per cent in the end – but it’s just one more nail in the coffin when it comes to the idea of dropping insurance costs. In fact, this is the third month in a row prices have gone up to the tune of around 2.1 per cent.

Again this is truly a drop in the bucket when it comes to the last three years of insurance price cuts that saw the industry shed 32.5 per cent of prices. So it’s kind of like the beginning of the end; have you ever been right atop a roller coaster before it plummets down at breakneck speed? It’s kind of like that right now, only with the amount of money you’ll have left over after prices start creeping up and not anything to deal with adrenaline or having a pleasant time.

So that’s the bad news; now for the good news. Oil prices, that have been in freefall for quite some time, could drive petrol prices under the £1 per litre threshold in the coming New Year. If you’re keeping score at home, the last time we had that kind of action on petrol was May of 2009!

So yes, the bad news is that we’re likely to see some insurance prices continue to ratchet up further and further as time goes on over the next few months or even years. However, with the price of petrol set to drop below £1 we could all see a bit less pain at the pump when we pull into the garage to top off our fuel tanks. It’s not the best alternative – especially since petrol prices do fluctuate that badly – but truly it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?

Well, most likely not. However, if you keep telling yourself that perhaps you’ll start believing it sooner or later, eh? I know it sounds cynical and bitter; what can I say besides ‘guilty as charged?’

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 28 NOV 2014:

If you’re not a big fan of shopping around for car insurance or van insurance every year, guess what: your laziness is costing you – likely more than you think.

For what it’s worth, nobody enjoys having to deal with insurance companies, especially when it comes to those parasitic little bastards that you have to, by law, associate yourselves with in order to keep your car or van on the road. Plenty of people just find the cheapest deal they can initially find – usually by checking an insurance comparison site – and then just mindlessly auto-renew every 12 months, but did you know that this costs motorists an extra £2 billion every year?

I know that sounds like a completely made up figure, but I’m not trying to take the piss out of you. The truth is that insurers almost always increase your premium cost from one year to the next, relying on laziness and apathy on the part of policyholders to not actually investigate how much they could save by switching to another provider. It’s a tactic that’s worked wonderfully well for insurers – but not so well for cash-strapped Brits trying to make ends meet, or ones that think their loyalty with a certain insurance firm will be rewarded.

Now I know what you’re probably thinking: but everyone keeps saying that the cost of annual cover is going down on average! Well that may be true for new customers, but it certainly isn’t for existing ones. Insurers need to attract new policyholders after all, and the best way to do that is to offer an attractive headline rate for the first year; at the same time insurers need to keep paying the bills, so the rates these new customers are charged are subsidised, by and large, by hapless policyholders who see their insurance costs ratcheted up year on year.

So how do you avoid being victimised by this business practice on the part of insurers? It’s easy, mate – just don’t auto-renew like a pillock every year and you’ll be right as rain. Yes, it takes a bit of extra work on your part but the savings alone are worth it. Do you want to be part of that £2 billion? I know that I sure don’t want to!

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 7 NOV 2014:

So here’s one that will stretch your mind: one insurer says car insurance and van insurance is going down in price whilst another says it’s rising.

In news that squarely falls into the category of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, car insurance provider Esure swears up and down that the price of cover is still on the decline, yet the AA insists that it’s going up. So what in the world is going on here, and which of these insurance organisations is telling the truth?

Esure, the driving force behind Sheila’s Wheels and the operator of one of the major insurance comparison sites out there, says that it’s simply too early to say that premium prices have stabilised or not. The insurer has been reporting drops in its insurance premiums to the point where its share price has tumbled some 6 per cent after it reported its third quarter premium pricing went down by around 7.4 per cent.

Meanwhile, the AA says that average comprehensive costs have gone up 1.2 per cent – or around £6 – over the same period of time. So what’s the deal?

Well, for what it’s worth, the AA takes a wider look at the insurance industry as a whole. The motoring organisation takes a long, hard look at a number of insurers before averaging the price changes together – and that means that its figures incorporate price drops and price increases. Meanwhile, Esure is only one firm; sure, it may incorporate more than one insurance provider, and it may be pulling data from a number of other insurers in its comparison website, but it’s not taking as large a picture of the industry as a whole as the AA may be getting.

In other words, both the AA and Esure might very well be right. It’s one of the problems with statistics – you can really say anything you like and have figures to back it up. Whatever the end result is, prices are most definitely still in flux in the insurance industry. THe AA didn’t exactly exhibit a massive jump in prices over the last quarter with only 1.2 per cent average increases; while Esure’s more weighty 6 per cent drop may be frightening its investors, there’s nothing to say that the insurance provider might end up trending up over the next three months.

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 17 OCT 2014:

So much for good times: it looks like cheap insurance rates are coming to an end, thanks to a number of ‘perfect storm’ issues in the industry.

When it comes to car insurance costs, they’ve been down lately for the most part – and that’s a good thing. Whether you’re just commuting to and from the office every day or you get behind the wheel of a van to make deliveries or travel to work locations, you’ve got to keep your vehicle on the road. Paying your car insurance or van insurance is just one of those things you’ve got to do, and thankfully it’s been rather cheap lately – but now an insurance comparison sit says that the cost of comprehensive cover increased by £56 last month alone.

That might not seem like much, but keep in mind this rise took place over the a very short period of time. This could easily mean more steep rises in the future, and that means we’ll all be feeling the heat soon enough. So what caused the rate hike? Well industry experts say that insurers got themselves embroiled in a price war that ended up slashing premium prices unsustainably low – though insurers themselves like to blame fraud activity instead.

Insurance companies absolutely love to point the finger at scammers trying to get away with murder, and there’s some evidence of that this week as well. Apparently there was a spate of fraud perpetrated in County Tyrone that victimized some 40 people.

What happened? Well someone was selling false insurance certificates to area residents in order to turn a tidy profit. This is particularly egregious because there could be countless motorists driving around without proper insurance – and guess what happens to you if they end up pranging your Ford Transit whilst you’re trying to make a delivery!

I hear that someone’s been arrested under suspicion of being involved in the widespread scam, which makes me happy. If it turns out that he was the bastard behind the scam, there are about two score County Tyrone residents that would like a piece of him – and I don’t mean that figuratively. I’ll wager the fraudster will get torn limb-from-limb, and I honestly can’t say that I would feel bad for the bloke.