Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 8 September 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Rising Cost of Motor Insurance: Discussion

11:00 am

Mr. Conor Faughnan:

-----70% over a two-year period. This is just a pure guess. Beside me is somebody with greater technical expertise than me who will probably shoot me for making the guess but as a rough rule of thumb, I would guess that perhaps half of it is explained by underwriting factors, namely, crashes and the cost of the crashes. Layered on top of that there are things such as the discount rate, which is not an underwriting factor, and the Solvency II Directive, which is not an underwriting factor, but again they cannot claim this took them by surprise because it was coming for years and years. I would not attribute the balance to supernormal profits - perhaps that is just a point of view - but to supernormal caution based on fears of having been stung before and fears that the new claims and cost of claims landscape is the new normal. If what we have now in terms of the cost of claims is the new normal and if one hates all our existing insurance companies and wants to drive them all out of the country like St. Patrick with the snakes and bring in a new lot or start a Government one, it will not solve the problem because all of those underlying costs will still be there.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.