Insurers To Publish Last Year Premium Too

Insurers To Publish Last Year Premium Too.

Find out last year's premium easily.

In an effort to make consumers more aware of how their general insurance premiums vary the financial industry regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has proposed new rules where insurance companies when offering renewal terms at the end of your insurance period will also be required to include the premium that you paid last year.

What is general insurance?

Things like household buildings and contents insurance, business insurance, private medical insurance and even boiler insurance. Think of all those insurance policies that you have that are yearly renewable and those will usually be general insurance policies.

Pilot exercise completed

A number of insurance companies have conducted a pilot exercise on the same which has involved 300,000 insurance paying clients and the results of including last year's premiums has resulted in up to 18% of people either moving insurance company to secure a more competitive premium or have returned to their existing insurer to renegotiate down renewal terms.

Comment

We are delighted that the regulator is proposing these changes and we believe it will lead to a better consumer outcome with lower overall insurance prices.

This is all about knowledge: in the general insurance industry many people suffer from a state of "inertia" and simply renew their household or motor insurance with the same company as it is quite a chore to shop around each year.

By forcing insurance companies to offer readily available information on last year's premiums will save consumers having to dig out their old renewal documents from last year and will prompt people to compare what they paid last year to this year resulting in, as we have seen with the pilot exercise, more people shopping around and hopefully saving money.