On the third party liability, from Ania, heard in the Senate committee, there are suggestions to reduce costs and therefore the prices paid by citizens. In summary, there are five proposals: 1) more rigorous criteria for ascertaining invalidity; 2) approve the tables of the law for the most serious disabilities and set equitable and economically sustainable parameters for the damages of the relatives of the primary victims; 3) against fraud it is necessary to set up a prevention body endowed with managerial and patrimonial autonomy and above all supported by a real operational structure; 4) direct compensation must be obligatory; 5) bonus-malus: the contractual clauses must be left to the free determination of the companies in application of the principle of competition.
The occasion was served by Paolo Garonna, general manager of Ania, to focus attention on the rates applied, on the phenomenon of fraud against insurance companies and on what he defined as "critical factors". The latter represented by the absence to date of effective tools to combat fraud; the abnormal number of very minor personal injuries of speculative origin; the delay in issuing the regulations for compensation for more serious personal injury; technically incorrect rules such as the one that altered the bonus/malus system or the one that increased distribution costs by introducing the prohibition of single agency mandates; the regulatory and jurisprudential uncertainties that have undermined the direct compensation system; the shortcomings and delays of civil justice.
As for tariffs, which are often accused, Garonna pointed out that the trend of price increases began in 2010 and is continuing in 2011, after however "five consecutive years of reduction - between 2005 and 2009 - during of which in real terms, ie net of inflation, the average price of motor liability coverage had decreased by over 20%”. And Garonna explained that the increases were necessary "due to the strong deterioration of the technical management: if in 2005 for every 100 euro of premiums collected the companies spent 97, in 2009 they spent 108 and 106 in 2010. In the last two companies have lost more than a billion euros a year in this branch”.
Last year, the average increase in the motor liability cover price was 4,8%. In the first 6 months of 2011 the increase calculated on an annual basis is 5,7%. Istat data, which analyzes the tariffs charged by all businesses in the Municipalities that make up the survey sample, show a 4,8% year-on-year trend increase in October.
The reduction in the frequency of claims that is being recorded in the last year suggests a stabilization trend in the price of motor liability insurance during 2012 "provided that the structural factors indicated are kept under control - warned Garonne - if these factors are not addressed prices will continue to fluctuate between more and less, but will remain high in any case”.
