Car-Insurance-UK-Supermarket.co.uk
compare online quotes the easy way
|
||||
|
||||
Transport Committee Report on Car Insurance - Review31 Jan 2011In our blog, Transport Committee Report on the Cost of Motor Insurance, we summarised the findings and recommendations of the Transport Select Committee's enquiry into the high cost of motor insurance, to which we refer the interested reader in advance of perusal of our review comments below. Since the publication of the Committee's report, the Government has decided to press ahead with the Jackson reforms, although, as expected, they are not planning to scrap referral fees. They have therefore not heeded the Committee's advice to hold back and undertake research into the possible effects on access to justice. From the point of reference of this website, the Government's haste is in the car insurance consumer's interest as it brings forward the date that the Jackson recommendations will start to help insurers to reduce the cost of car insurance. While the committee's recommendation that insurance companies make their payments of referral fees known to consumers is sound, they missed the opportunity to recommend an outright ban on them. The evidence presented to them by expert witnesses on this issue was contradictory, perhaps leading them to the view that there was no basis to recommend a ban. However, some of the evidence presented to the Committee, that stood up well to objective scrutiny, confirmed that referral fees are not a necessary component of the claims market and that they lead to uneconomic referral patterns. It is therefore regretable that they felt unable to be more bold. The Committee responded sensibly to the rising level of car insurance fraud, supporting the development of new joint policing intitiatives with the insurance industry while flagging up the need to learn as much as possible from other countries' experiences. All in all, it was a reasonable, if slightly restrained response to the evidence with which they were presented. |
||||
|
