Insurance Firms Are Driving Businesses Into The Ground

What A miserable year it has been for so many people trying to make an honest living. Shopkeepers, publicans, hotel workers, anyone who works in the theatre and many others – Covid has pulled the rug from under them all.

- Ross Clark

Many have lost their livelihoods altogether, along with businesses they have built up over many years.

But, as so often in a recession or other crisis, some people have still managed to profit – and not just the well-known examples of companies supplying PPE to the Government at way over the odds and the IT contractors paid thousands of pounds a day to set up the wretched NHS Covid app and test and trace system. The car insurance industry, too, has been quietly lining its pockets at our expense.

A report by the Association of Consumer Support Organisations (ACSO) reveals that while car insurance premiums have fallen by an average of seven per cent this year, the drop nothing like reflects the plunge in payouts that the industry has had to make. When the first lockdown was called in March 2020 road traffic immediately plunged to a fraction of its normal level. Over the year 2020-21 there was a 27 per cent drop, with the fall in private car mileage falling even further, by 31 per cent.