Insurers raided for alleged cartel activity

Some raids on the legal profession and the doctors certifying suspicious personal injury claims would be a nice addition.

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

Seems the raids where by the EU competition authority, not an Irish body. This bit of information gives me hope something might actually come from this.

Even better news, its about time cosy cartels were shown up for what they are.

Remember the thread about insuring cars after a certain year, when two huge competing companies made a decision THE EXACT SAME DECISION in fact within hours of each other.

I dont know what anybody calls that, but me, I call it collusion.

I was in the past used to dealing with multinationals
And one thing I can tell you is this.
Decisions take months.

A decision like this to stop insuring certains overage cars is not taken lightly, and definitely not within hours of another company making that decision.

Jayop wrote: »

A coincidence that multiple insurance companies all made the decision to stop insuring cars ten years and older, all at the same time, all the exact same age?

That would be a hell of a coincidence.

For sure. Where did this restriction leave consumers in terms of open internal markets? Do similar market conditions exist and get tolerated in car manufacturing EU countries, like Spain, France, Italy?

Most of the major players in Ireland do business in the UK and/or througout Europe, I have yet to see any mention in the UK media of any mass exclusions of cover on cars 10 years old like we have here. The cars are identical in this market as the UK and we drive on the same side of the road, they don't put these exclusions in the UK because they simply wouldn't be allowed get away with it, we have muppetry regulation here.

The entire industry needs to be radically shaken up, the lack of transparency is unreal. Same goes with the Law Society and Injury Board aspect of it around ambulance chasing legal professionals and injury payouts. Reasons for why premiums increase are spouted by both sides while facts and figures seem to point to the other as the main cause.

They'll probably get fined and pass that onto consumers

LIGHTNING wrote: »

I expect them to get "punished" in the way the bankers that stuffed us all did i.e nothing at all

I'd say if they found even the most gross malpractice they would do nothing.
They will get away Scott free.

wally79 wrote: »

They'll probably get fined and pass that onto consumers

Dravokivich wrote: »

There's no point in fining them. Enforcing reviews that may result in lower rates would be more preferable for the consumer and the loss of earnings in itself would be in place of a fine.

I think both statements are correct.
There is no point in fining them, as any fines will just be passed on to the consumer. And that being said, even if they did find a cartel type setup, how are they going to force the insurance companies to stop that practice when fines are just passed on?

So long as Insurance is a legal requirement that is not provided by the state, the Insurance companies can do what they want.

It's a step in the right direction but I do not think much will come of it.

Wibbs wrote: »

So everybody that is an interested party is happy out.

Most definitely.
It's nice big triangle between the banks, the insurance companies and the government.

It make perfect sense, the government have been dragging their heals on this now for at least 2 years.
It's in their interest for insurance to be high.

Like you said it forces people to borrow or pay by the month (with Interest) which inflates the banks loan book.

Piss take.

Jayop wrote: »

A coincidence that multiple insurance companies all made the decision to stop insuring cars ten years and older, all at the same time, all the exact same age?

That would be a hell of a coincidence.

That wouldn't really be illegal though not under competition law.

Dravokivich wrote: »

Huh?

There was a demonstration organised over a year ago, but people jeered'em and told'em to put up with it.

Quick search on google:

https://www.joe.ie/motors/huge-convoy-to-dublin-planned-this-summer-to-protest-the-rising-cost-of-car-insurance-in-ireland-544207

Hardly as much hoopla as the water charges demonstrations...and something became of the water charges too.

Every motorist, homeowner, business owner has been hit hard for the last few years, and there would be more of them than households to pay for water.

Looking at the current housing crisis, more and more people are living at home with their parents, and they would own a car. If there was 3 cars per household, with a yearly increase of €250(that's being conservative), that's a €750 motor insurance cost on that household alone, a lot more than the average costs of water charges per household.

Damn corruption, collusion, cartel ridden excuse for the insurance industry.

Wibbs wrote: »

Take a look beyond the surface. The insurance companies took a bath on bank shares in the crash. Taking "old" cars off the road(IIRC one company reckons old starts at five years old) and getting people to buy new cars on loans or PCP's buoys up the banking sector. This helps the government as they try to offload shares in AIB for example as it looks good to investors when banks have a load of new business serviced loans on the books(and since new mortgages are in the doldrums..). And what shares are the insurance companies buying up again?

So everybody that is an interested party is happy out. The manufacturers and dealers cos they're selling cars(and lodging their money in banks). Insurance companies because it helps their non insurance based investments. The banks because they look more buoyant, with more loans and deposits going on. The government because they get all the new car sales tax, their bank shares look better as they sell them off and the economic optics look good to the EU and IMF(and can claim they're aiming to be more "green"). Keeps the eye off the ball of the rapidly worsening housing crisis(again) with it. Win win, save for the man and woman in the street of course.

There's a forum for conspiracy theories.

As another poster said, accounts are easily available and show varying results from different insurers.

PCP is a novel way to entice people to buy new cars.

Is there a European wide single market for car insurance, and if so why do we need to buy it from the rip off companies here.

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

Is there a European wide single market for car insurance, and if so why do we need to buy it from the rip off companies here.

There is a free market.

Any insurance company can sell insurance in Ireland.

They don't because it isn't a profitable market, despite what many would like you to think.

Allinall wrote: »

There is a free market.

Any insurance company can sell insurance in Ireland.

They don't because it isn't a profitable market, despite what many would like you to think.

So from your statement we can conclude that all insurers in the Irish motor market are operating at a loss?

Got a source to that information? Seems like a poor business model.

Fanny **** wrote: »

Look at slide 15 of the presentation here:

https://www2.deloitte.com/ie/en/pages/financial-services/events/Motor_Insurance_Seminar.html

And that's before cost of capital

All the data comes from publicly available sources - profitability data from the old 'blue book' I assume

Edit: you'll also see that (for the market as a whole) investment returns were positive over the period examined (but has reduced in recent years). So no - they didn't lose money "gambling on bank shares"

Honestly some of the replies on this thread make me despair - these people are actually allowed to vote FFS

I accept the logic in what you are saying, but my issue is whether what's written in the "Blue Book" etc is correct or not

I have a hard time trusting large faceless organisations.

The reality is that a numbers are most likely skewed, you may disagree with me on that, and that's fine.
But based on my experience working for large financial companies, they skew the numbers and present favorable statistics depending on what their goal may be at that time.
An example would be if they made a loss, they would write that loss off over 10 years.
If they make to much money (And have to pay to much corp tax) they would invent some capital expenditure to avoid paying tax.

You can present all the documents from auditors etc you like, but the trust just isn't there for me (and a great many other people)

Also to add to this the people carrying out these "audits" are kids, fresh out of college.
I deal with them once a year, I could tell them anything and they'd believe me, they have no real world experience. How can they be trusted to dig out valid data?

Finally a lot of auditing agency's are also ratings agencies... They did such a good job rating all those CDO's prior to the crash.

I'm sorry but I just cannot trust a word they say:
Audit/Rating agencies
Banks
Insurance companies
and recently the Garda

Tayschren wrote: »

Now it make sense, the margins are not small. The cartel just won't let others in.

Indeed, losses over the last 6-7 years have not been small. They've been catastrophic