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 Ship crossing the tunnel
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Time to make sure your uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage on your auto policy is up to snuff. Seen in the Wall Street Journal (subscriber link): Several hundred thousand drivers dropped their insurance in the past year as the jobless rate climbed, estimates a study to be released next month by the Insurance Research Council, an industry-funded group. Online [...]
Folks exposed to the business side of auto insurance are aware that claim frequency has been helped recently by demographic trends, and changes impacting teen drivers, including the introduction of graduated licensing. It looks like a few of those teen-impacting trends may continue. Seen at CNN: Starting next year, Ford Motor Co. will allow parents to limit [...]
Even though they do a horrible job explaining it, the AJC mentions one less-publicized provision in Georgia’s new auto insurance law which is definitely worth noting: The so-called “stacking provision” in SB 276 will allow you to piggy-back your uninsured/underinsured motorists protection onto another motorist’s policy. That way, if you’re hit in an accident and the [...]
Over the weekend, the New York Times Magazine carried a Freakonomics article which looked at mileage-based auto insurance rating as a tool to promote energy conservation: While economists may argue that gas is poorly priced, that imbalance can’t compare with how poorly insurance is priced. Imagine that Arthur and Zelda live in the same city and [...]
Seen in the Rocky Mountain News: Democrats plan to introduce bills to require health insurance firms to get prior approval for rate hikes, punish them for improper denial of claims and encourage efficiencies.[...] Rep. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, said insurance companies are allowed to increase rates at will and get approval from the Division of Insurance later. She [...]
I’ve seen some discussion (e.g., InsureBlog, DiabetesMine, and Contingencies) on comparing the “mandatory-ness” of many of the quasi-universal health care proposals floating around in American political circles to the requirement in most states that drivers carry auto insurance as part of the conditions of driving a car. Mandatory auto insurance is, after all, is either believed [...]
Seen in Insurance Journal: Overall, Fitch said it expects the new system will benefit both consumers and the marketplace. “Consumers will benefit the most from a wider choice in carriers, innovations in coverage and lower rates for the average consumer,” Fitch says. However, Fitch maintains that Massachusetts insureds would benefit even more if underwriters were permitted to [...]
Conning is making some interesting-sounding noise about their latest paper on the nonstandard auto market. From a Conning press release: “As predictive modeling has become more prevalent in auto insurance underwriting, the standard auto market has expanded to include and price risks that would once have been thought of as nonstandard,” said Alan Dobbins, analyst [...]
I suspect that a nontrivial portion of the Massachusetts auto insurance buying public might be a little upset at the timing of the limited deregulation of Mass auto pricing. After all, with new rates generally taking effect on 1 April…well, if you had to reup your policy on 15 March, you might wish that [...]
Longtime readers know that I am no fan of insurance rate regulation. In a competitive and free market, market pressures will keep rates from getting too crazy. However, if society perceives a need to provide some protection/stability for certain folks for coverage they are obliged to buy…then I’m OK with rate regulation on [...] |
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