Car insurance: A maze of discounts
Battle for clients once again brings falling prices with 15-20% drop seen in insurance fees this year
Despite the planned accident tax that will be incorporated in mandatory liability insurance fees, car owners can bag great discounts again in this year’s third-party insurance campaign.
Insurance fees can be 15-20% lower in some cases (calculating without the accident tax, which would be 30% of the annual mandatory insurance fee), thus the cheapest offers on the market can be as low as HUF 14,000-15,000 for the entire year.
Several insurance companies will practically take over – partially or, in some cases, entirely – the burden of the accident tax from their clients with the extent of the discounts they are offering. On top of this, insurers are also offering a wide range of discounts, including insurance for speeding, or free trailer insurance.
Although price is still the main driver for switching insurers, four out of ten motorists also pay attention to the brand, a fresh poll by insurance site Netrisk.hu says.
According to the site, the most popular brand is Allianz, followed by Aegon and K&H Biztosító – in spite of the fact that Allianz does not come out on top when looking at which provider has the lowest offer.
But it is quite difficult to navigate your way around the maze of discounts and, according to Gábor Vass, managing director of insurance broking company PBA, this causes a great deal of uncertainty amongst car owners. The soon-to-be introduced accident tax is another factor contributing to this, Vass noted.
But in spite of all the hesitation, nearly 60,000 car owners (of the 4.2 million insured motorists) decided to switch firms or simply re-contract with their existing insurer on more favorable terms in the first week of the campaign, data from Netrisk.hu shows.
Although the number is about the same as a year ago, due to a legislative amendment that ties the signing of a new third-party insurance policy contract to the purchase date of the vehicle, almost 600,000 motorists have been excluded from this year’s November campaign.
According to estimates by Netrisk.hu, nearly one-third of motorists affected in this year’s campaign will switch to another company by the end of the one-month campaign. PF
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