Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 21 March 2014:

It seems like there’s no end to the way car and van insurance companies will mistreat their customers – but this week’s news stories absolutely take the cake.

This time, it looks like that the insurance market has specifically excluded whole swathes of the car and van driving community all in an effort to provide ‘relief’ to very specific classes of drivers. There are new rules going into effect through an amendment to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act that’s designed to help Brits that have done time for their offences and are trying to rebuild their lives that would strip the requirement to disclose their criminal records whilst applying for things like insurance and bank lending, but insurance lobbyists have made sure to have the amendment worded to purposefully exclude drivers with penalty points or licence endorsements.

In other words, you might find it easier to secure commercial van insurance if you’ve been to jail for burglary and paid your debt to society than if you were otherwise responsible but have had more than your fair share of parking or speeding tickets. Does this seem fair to anyone at all? Because it certainly doesn’t seem all that fair to me in the least.

This isn’t just some proposed change, either – it’s going into effect very soon and that means it’s going to impact motorists on the road today. In fact, another story comes to ind that I read this week involving a student that took his mother’s car out to pick up some cigarettes only to end up being involved in an accident on his way home and then fleeing the scene.

The 20 year old, who not only had taken his mum’s car without permission, was also driving without any insurance cover. This is of course why he panicked and left the scene of the road traffic accident. Not that it helped much – he was caught, and now he’s got some 80 hours of community service to fulfill as well as a one-year driving ban. By then the new rules will be in effect and he’ll have a devil of a time getting insurance cover for his own vehicle because these incidents will stay on his criminal record for up to five years. Meanwhile if he had walked to the corner shop for the cigarettes and robbed the place he wouldn’t have nearly the same trouble. Again, this isn’t fair in the least.

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.