It closed today the fact-finding investigation by the Antitrust on Rc Auto, decided on February 6th. Many proposals put forward by the Authority with the aim of making the policies are cheaper obligations that weigh on motorists: the modification of the direct compensation system stands out, through the introduction of mechanisms that encourage cost control by insurance companies, to recover efficiency and transfer the benefits to consumers in terms of lower premiums.
A lot of attention, by the Antitrust also for new contractual models which allow, in the face of substantial discounts to be guaranteed to the insured, the reduction of costs through the development of compensation in a specific form or on invoice.
The Authority also suggests solutions that facilitate mobility between one insurance company and another, which is very complex today, by reviewing the mechanism of internal merit classes and developing estimates that help consumers choose the most convenient policy.
POSSIBLE INTERVENTIONS
The survey, carried out on a representative sample of 82% of the market and of the policies effectively paid, confirms the many problems from the point of view of competition, which lead to non-competitive growth rates and variability of premiums and to compensation structures at burden of companies that are not efficient in the productive sense, despite the introduction of the direct compensation procedure in 2007.
The Antitrust recognizes the merit of the latest regulatory interventions for going in the right direction, underlining, however, the need for further steps forward.
a) Reimbursement to the company that compensates its own damaged policyholder should take place, again through a clearing house, as happens today, on the basis of a lump sum defined according to the procedures currently in force, but reduced by a percentage. Essentially, progressively decreasing levels should be envisaged for the amount that companies pay each other today in the event of damage caused by one of their policyholders, thanks to the introduction of a cap on the lump sum.
b) Contractual models must be adopted which increase, on the one hand, the companies' ability to control compensation and, on the other, the possibility of self-selection by policyholders.
c) It is necessary to eliminate any element of uncertainty on micro-permanent injuries, making only those that emerge from instrumental investigations compensable.
d) Certainty and clarity regarding the internal classes must be introduced, providing, in the event of a change of insurer, that the "new" company attributes to the insured an internal class no lower than that which would be assigned to one of its own insured having the same risk characteristics.
e) The development of new and effective tools should be encouraged on line useful for the comparison of a large number of awards for the RC Auto easy and immediate use.
IN ITALY DOUBLE AWARDS THAN FRANCE AND PORTUGAL
The Antitrust investigation also shed light on the continuous growth of motor liability premiums in Italy, which increased between 2006 and 2010 at twice the rate of that in the Eurozone. The average premium in Italy is more than double that of France and Portugal, it exceeds the German one by about 80% and the Dutch one by almost 70%.
At the same time, our country is characterized by the highest frequency of claims and the average cost of claims among the main European countries: in particular, the frequency of claims is almost double that in France and the Netherlands and approximately 30% higher than in Germany; the average cost of claims in Italy exceeds that of France by about 13%, that of Germany by more than 20% and is more than double that of Portugal. However, the number of frauds ascertained against companies in Italy appears to be four times lower than that ascertained by companies in the United Kingdom and half of that ascertained in France.
PENSIONERS, YOUNG PEOPLE AND FORTY YEAR OLD ARE THE MOST PENALIZED
The survey also confirms the very large increases following the introduction of direct compensation. Motor liability premiums grew over the period analyzed (2007-2010) at rather significant rates for almost all policyholder profiles and in a large part of the provincial areas considered in the survey, for both males and females . Retirees with small-engined cars, young people with mopeds and forty-year-olds with motorcyclesi are the categories of policyholders for which premiums have increased in most of the provinces included in the sample analysed.
