The question isn't who has injected extra millions into their motor reserves, but who hasn’t?
Esure Holdings is the latest insurer to catch light from the bodily injury blaze that’s whipping through the market, as we report this week. A £14.2m loss, from a £3.5m profit the year before – I wonder how that little skeleton in the closet affected the price Peter Wood paid when he bought the business out from Lloyd’s in February?
Who’s next? Equity Red Star has already had to pump millions into its reserves and RBSI’s reserve boosts are common knowledge, as is the fact that HSBC had to sink more than £200m into its book before putting it into run-off last year. Insurers such as AXA and Groupama have already taken a deep breath and boosted their own reserves.
So perhaps the question is not who has injected extra millions into their motor reserves, but who hasn’t? Because those insurers that have failed to price adequately and have yet to accept the full scale of the bodily injury crisis could suffer the most in the final analysis.
Insurers need to focus on cutting costs. Groupama is asking brokers to validate driver information at the point of policy inception. This will put a stop to the outrageous situation whereby insurers are finding themselves on the hook for third-party liability claims against drivers who took out policies using fraudulent personal information.
Then there’s the cost of care. At a recent Insurance Times claims event, AXA’s David Williams suggested that insurers could cut claims inflation by taking a direct hand in funding care provision like hospital wings and care homes. Now there’s a thought. IT
ellen.bennett@insurancetimes.co.uk
