How Motor Insurers Should Tackle Rising Claims Costs

In this article, we’ll hear from Edward Hill, SVP European Markets, at INSHUR about how motor insurers should tackle rising claims costs, without forcing customers to shoulder the burden.

(Response to this article in which the ABI claims insurers must raise motor premiums to account for rising claims costs)

The Association of British Insurers’ has claimed that motor premiums will “probably need to go up further” because claims costs are still increasing. At INSHUR, since we predicted these increases were on their way early last year, we’ve been working hard to make sure our customers feel as little impact from them as possible – by ensuring pricing didn’t experience huge increases and that our claims infrastructure was robust enough to weather the storm. After all, our customers are hard working on-demand drivers from whom every penny counts.

Historically, insurance organisations have been very siloed in how they manage portfolios, but today’s tough environment no longer supports that. Now, insurers can’t just do one thing well in order to remain profitable while protecting our customers. It’s about ensuring the entire organisation – underwriting, pricing and analytics, validation and counter fraud, claims management and technology – pulls together to stay lean and mitigate rising costs. 

Everyone at INSHUR works together to maintain a laser focus on loss ratio, as part of a long-term customer-centric strategy to smooth out any bumps along the way and, ultimately, do what’s right for our customer. This approach is underpinned by our market-leading technology and an almost fanatical focus on data – both in-house and from our partners – delivering one source of truth across the organisation, enabling real-time changes to pricing models as and when they’re needed, and giving our customers access to the fairest deals on the market.

2023 has produced a perfect storm for the insurance industry, with inflation, government turmoil, scarcity of parts, cost of living crisis, and regulatory constraints being just a few of the elements creating a challenging environment. By taking a long-term view and adopting an aggressive intervention strategy, insurers can stay ahead of the game to reduce the impact on customers, who are also grappling with financial challenges of their own.