Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 13 March 2014:

If you’re tired of shelling out an arm and a leg on your commercial van insurance, worry not – it looks like telematics-based insurance is poised to take over.

If you’re unaware of the technology behind telematics-based car insurance, it’s not really all that complex. It’s based on the same tech that powers your satnav, only instead of providing you turn-by-turn directions it instead spies on you whilst you’re behind the wheel. Oh yes, insurers will try to spin it to a more positive light but let’s be completely honest: a telematics device, once fitted, keeps close tabs on your motoring habits. Step out of line – drive too fast, brake too hard, take corners too recklessly – and your insurance rates will go up. Stay within the law and behave yourself and your car insurance costs will decline.

It’s good business, as long as you don’t mind giving up your privacy rights in exchange for cheaper van insurance, but with the typical insurance provider more interested in making as much money as they can off you telematics is bound to become incredibly popular. In fact, a new research study released this week discovered that telematics-based insurers are in a prime position to take the world by storm – and British drivers are ready to switch over in order to save some serious cash.

It isn’t just British drivers either, according to another news story that broke this week. US mobile giant Sprint is announcing that they will be providing connectivity for telematics devices in the US. That’s not all, though – AT&T, one of Sprint’s main rivals in the US telecoms market, is also rapidly approaching the unveiling of a similar service that it will market in direct competition to Sprint.

Now I know I’m a bit critical of telematics insurance, but I do have to admit that it could be an excellent way for commercial van fleets to save cash in the long run, especially since it encourages employees to drive more carefully (and that there’s direct evidence of whether or not they’ve been behaving according to the telematics data).

Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 7 March 2014:

I’ve been saying for years how car insurance and van insurance companies don’t respect their customers, but now there’s even more evidence proving me right.

In fact, not even celebrities are free from the all-encompassing grasp of vehicle insurers, as a new interview with James Purefoy just revealed this week. Purefoy, star of film and television that’s best known for his riveting performance as Mark Anthony on ‘Rome,’ said his insurer actually rang him up to inform him his rates were being hiked – and all because he was in a relationship with another celebrity at the time.

Some time ago, Purefoy was romantically involved with fellow star Gwyneth Paltrow, and while the relationship has since ended – on good terms – the aftermath of if lingers on in his insurance premiums. Purefoy ruefully recounted a tale how a particularly diligent insurance employee rang him up after seeing a picture of him and Paltrow in his car, and informed him that his rates were going up by £500. I didn’t know that dating a celebrity made you a worse driver, but apparently it does! Either way the insurer made an additional 500 quid out of the deal.

Of course if insurers treat celebrities this way, imagine how they treat the white van man that lives down the street from you. That’s right: insurers see us as little more than vast pinatas they can just keep hitting until we split open and rain money down on them, and insurers are making a mint. To prove my point massive insurance group Admiral just announced its 2013 pre-tax profits have gone up by 7 per cent from the previous year’s to a jaw-dropping £370 million. That’s not revenue – that’s profits.

So where’s that money coming from? Well where do you think? It’s people like us that get raked over the coals, simply because we have no choice if we want to keep our vehicles on the road legally. Personal and commercial van insurance providers have us all over a barrel, and even as insurers pat themselves on the back for ‘reducing insurance costs’ – evidenced by market surveys that are ever skewed in their favour. It’s enough to make you sell your car and just walk everywhere. Good luck doing that if you don’t have public transport links in your region!

Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 28 Feb 2014:

Car insurance and van insurance customers just can’t seem to win this week with the amount of fraud that just came to light once more, driving up costs for all.

New data indicates that more than 1,000 motorists are victimised every week by fraudsters staging crashes. In fact there have been around 300,000 ‘cash for crash’ saged road traffic accidents since 2008, ruining the day of countless drivers and giving insurers – and their customers – massive headaches in the form of hiked premium prices.

Fraudsters know who just to target, too, when it comes to their criminal pursuits. Turns out that women and younger Brits are a specific favourite, which turns into a case of chicken or the egg as these classes of drivers are often accused of being statistically more likely to be involved in an accident. Is it that scammers are targeting these motorists because of these statistics or if they’re causing these statistics in the first place? Can you even believe it?

Then again there’s even more to complain about when it comes to fraud levels this week. Just when you thought that the criminal behaviour is confined to gangs of fraudsters roaming the country’s motorways and crashing into lorries to drive up commercial van insurance premiums, it turns out that there was a positively massive security breach at major insurer Aviva.

Apparently two former Aviva employees – long since sacked, thanks goodness – stand accused of making off with tens of thousands of the personal records of policyholders that have been involved in an accident of some kind. They’ve taken these records and allegedly have sold them on to claims management companies who then have turned around and begun to solicit these accident victims to bring RTA claims

So yes, apparently there’s no honour amongst thieves – or those who profit from thievery. It’s one thing to have organised fraud rings smashing into you at roundabouts but now you’ve got ambulance-chasing claims management companies coming after you and pestering you to allow them to make claims on your behalf! All of this claims activity just drives up premiums even further of course, so don’t be surprised if your annual cover gets a lot more expensive any time soon.

Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 27 Dec 2013:

Ever have one of those Christmas seasons where nothing goes right and it doesn’t matter what you do to change it? That’s exactly what’s happened this week.

First up is how the fallout from the Competition Commission’s latest report positively ruined Christmas for the shareholders of one major car insurance provider. Admiral Group saw its stock price take a tumble earlier this week after the Commission revealed that many car and van insurance providers are wringing extra cash from their customers in the form of ratcheted up costs for car hire and repair services. Apparently investors take a dim view to their portfolio being made up of companies that are caught red-handed in padding their profit margins by charging over and above the fair market price for their services – especially when some of these general and commercial van insurance companies are insisting on shoddy repair work being done and then charging as if it was not substandard.

It’s absolutely horrid to discover your insurer isn’t just treating you like a cash cow but is content to beat the cow to death for the leather. Still, things go on unabated for many insurers – and all too many customers, which is where the other half of this week’s bad Christmas story comes in – it turns out that things are so bad in Northern Ireland when it comes to insurance costs that the Consumer Council is telling residents to dump their existing insurer and shop around for a better deal. In fact, motoring costs in NI are so high that it’s often impossible to get a good deal on things like petrol or insurance, despite best efforts – not exactly the kind of Christmas message you want to get!

Hopefully the report from the Competition Commission will shake things up enough that this kind of behaviour on the part of insurers will come to an abrupt end. For what it’s worth there’s all too much of this when it comes to insurance companies taking hard advantage of their customers, especially in markets like Northern Ireland! Enough is enough; it’s one thing to run a company to make a profit and it’s another one altogether to do whatever it takes to make as much profit as possible – it’s just bloody wrong if you ask me!

And this is exactly why we need the Competition Commission to step in and change things as far as the insurance market is concerned. If you ask me, there’s no way the industry itself will regulate itself, especially not when all these companies are in business to make a profit; you need to have an outside source ensure that everyone’s playing fair and that’s simply not happening. Until this does indeed happen, we’ll have instances like in Northern Ireland, where motorists are being urged to shop around as much as they can.

I can only hope that the Competition Commission positively throws the figurative book at the insurance industry. Let’s get some regulation in there to make sure we’re not all paying through the nose on overpriced replacement vehicles and substandard repair work!

Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 20 Dec 2013:

Well, it’s finally a matter of the official record: you are literally paying more than you should be for van insurance, even if you somehow got a good quote.

How can I say that with so much certainty? Well I mean everyone knows that van and car insurance companies charge you an arm and a leg, but most of the time this has meant just impotent complaining. However, this time things are different: the Competition Commission itself has finally weighed in, declaring that we’re all being taken to the cleaners by the insurance industry – and the methods insurers use to crank up the prices may come as a bit of a shock.

The Commission discovered that whether it’s a car insurance or commercial van insurance provider, they have probably been ratcheting up their premium prices in order to cover the costs they incur in over-charging their customers when it comes to car hire and repair bills.

It’s more or less a scam if you ask me, and it works brilliantly: insurers have substandard parts and shoddy workmanship to repair damaged cars and then charge full-price to whomever was at fault in the accident. The same goes for car hire costs as well – insurers inflate these costs in order to line their own pockets – and the end result is massive rate hikes for unsuspecting drivers.

The Competition Commission was quick to condemn the practice – as they should have – but the insurance industry responded to the publication of the report as well. Unsurprisingly the industry tried to spin the results to make them appear more favourable or to garner some sympathy; while the Commission recommended regulatory action be taken in order to stamp out this price-gouging behaviour on the part of the industry, repair service and car hire firms have been quick to say that any new regulations may endanger the ability of these companies to make a living!.

This is of course patently ridiculous. Only in the insurance industry can you catch a company with their hand in the cookie jar and have them vehemently deny any wrongdoing. Typical if you ask me!