In 2017, almost 190 thousand dormant insurance policies were "awakened", allowing Italians to collect more than three and a half billion euros. The announcement comes from Salvatore Rossi, president of the Insurance Supervisory Institute (IVASS), who illustrated the latest in Rome on Wednesday Annual report on the Institute's activity.
Dormant policies are those that in recent years had to be paid but for various reasons have never been collected, remaining in the company archives pending the prescription. It happened, for example, to those who did not know that a deceased relative had taken out insurance to cover the risk of death.
At the urging of IVASS, the companies have tracked down most of these policies and paid the due premiums. Between the payments already made and those in progress we are already over 3,5 billion, but the sum is destined to rise, considering that the companies are checking another 900 contracts. The Supervisory Institute estimates that Italians will be able to recover 4-4,5 billion from dormant policies.
For the future, “we are discussing with the insurance companies on how to prevent this phenomenon – explains Rossi – Certainly the companies can be more active. One of our ideas is to allow them access to the tax registers of the resident population, but for the moment this is only a hypothesis”.
RC AUTO: PRICES DOWN BY OVER 100 EUROS IN 4 YEARS
As regards the most widespread insurance cost, that of motor liability, IVASS points out that prices continue to fall. In the four-year period 2013-2017, “the average premium dropped by almost a quarter, over 100 euros, and today stands at 340 euros – continues Rossi – Price disparities across the territory have also greatly decreased. For example, the Naples-Aosta differential has more than halved, going from over 400 euros in 2012 to less than 200 last year”.
The spread of the black box has contributed decisively to the drop in prices. Again between 2013 and 2017, the policies that provide for the installation of this device increased from 10% to over 20% of the total, with peaks of 60% in the southern areas, thus bringing the Italian market to the top of the world rankings of diffusion of motor connected insurance.
“INSURANCE ARBITRATOR” COMING WITHIN A YEAR
Another initiative to protect consumers on which IVASS is working is the creation of the Insurance Arbitrator, a dispute resolution system parallel to those already existing in the banking sector (theAbf set up by Bank of Italy) and financial (theAcf of Consob). According to President Rossi, the new instrument will come into operation within a year.
TOTAL PREMIUMS DOWN IN 2017: LIFE BRANCH WEIGHTS
But how is the Italian market going in general? IVASS notes that premium income of 132 billion euros was collected last year, a decrease of 2,5% compared to 2016.
The decrease is exclusively due to the Life business: “We are talking about almost 3 and a half billion euro of lower revenues – underlines Rossi – The low returns that companies can offer on traditional policies (class I) have reduced their attractiveness for customers. The premiums collected on these policies amounted to 63 billion, 10 billion less than in 2016. The loss was limited by the simultaneous growth of unit link policies (class III), which place all or part of the financial risk on the part of the subscriber".
The Non-Life sector instead grew by 1,1%, interrupting the regressive cycle that began in 2012.
As for 2018, in the first quarter IVASS recorded an overall growth in premiums of 2,1% on an annual basis.
