Another b****y car insurance thread.

[netman]

...- total saving from these 2 changes has been almost £800 p.a.

If that's not a great excuse to buy another bike then I don't know what is!

 

[Dave 123]

We are with Hastings. We had the renewal letter the other week....

Your premium last year was £325
This year it will be £420

We gave them a little phone call. No quibble, £325.

It's criminal really.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

If that's not a great excuse to buy another bike then I don't know what is!

I used the saving on the car insurance as an excuse already. Might even get another one...

 

[srw]

LV letter said I had been with them a long time and that I may get it cheaper elsewhere.

Liverpool Victoria used to be a fairly well-behaved mutual but now they're just doing the same shoot as everyone else.

LV motor has always been run as a standalone commercial operation which happens to share a brand with its owner*, the mutual life company. And the comment that @screenman quotes is now mandatory on renewals if you're a long-standing customer - it's a classic bit of behavioural economics by the FCA to nudge customers that they could save money.

I might come back later on the wider question.

*Until the end of the year, when German giant Allianz takes 49%, rising to 70% in due course. Which is because the mutual wasn't actually very good at managing its capital.

 

[mjr]

*Until the end of the year, when German giant Allianz takes 49%, rising to 70% in due course. Which is because the mutual wasn't actually very good at managing its capital.

That's one interpretation. Another is that it's just another battle in the conservatives' (small c, not just much of the same-named UK party) 40+-year war against mutual financial institutions, gradually ratcheting up how everything must conform to capitalist terms - and even then, it only achieves a "reduction in the risk exposure"! (quote from the Solvency II Directive) One day there will be another improbable event that effectively bankrupts the capitalist speculators and I expect there will be a load more "too big to fail" waffle as pseudo-nationalisation is again abused to make us all pay for them.

 

[Electric_Andy]

I have a great collection of Meerkats and am now enjoying two for one cinema. A just reward for a bit of internet trawling.

Me too. I'm saving up the Meerkats for my retirement, perhaps a large collection will be worth something by then. I even have the special edition Batman Meerkat.

 

[srw]

That's one interpretation. Another is that it's just another battle in the conservatives' (small c, not just much of the same-named UK party) 40+-year war against mutual financial institutions, gradually ratcheting up how everything must conform to capitalist terms - and even then, it only achieves a "reduction in the risk exposure"! (quote from the Solvency II Directive) One day there will be another improbable event that effectively bankrupts the capitalist speculators and I expect there will be a load more "too big to fail" waffle as pseudo-nationalisation is again abused to make us all pay for them.

If you want to start a discussion about the politics of Solvency II, feel free, probably in a different thread - but I should warn you that your interpretation is partial at best, and your attempts to link the insurance industry in Europe with "too big to fail" and pseudo-nationalisation is doomed to fail. The short version is that Solvency II can be blamed for many things, and has several failings, the biggest of which is its focus on point-in-time solvency - but since most of the mutual insurance sector in the UK and Europe is in spiffing health your conspiracy theory isn't going to get very far.

And your quote from the Solvency II directive is wrenched a very long way from its context.

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