Strong regulation at a premium for insurers

FOR the consumer and for businesses in general competition is something to be welcomed. It encourages better business practice, it keeps prices at a more consumer friendly level and it generally results in improved standards and superior service. When people can shop around, competing businesses tend to sharpen up their act.

That insurance prices are exorbitant in this country has been all too obvious for far too long. Now an investigation by the European Commission appears to be shaping up to deliver a verdict indicating that anti-competitive practices may be operating here, and that new companies eager to set up shop are being frozen out of the motor insurance market.

Following the seizing of documents from the Insurance Ireland lobby group last year, the EC’s investigators are now examining the situation in an effort to establish whether foreign companies are, indeed, being excluded from the insurance market in this country, a situation that would run contrary to European law. Insurance Ireland, meanwhile, insists that it is fully compliant in the area of competition law.

While we now await with interest the outcome of this EC insurance probe, perhaps it is time to take general stock in relation to the insurance market here. We have all had experience, after all, personally or within our family circles, of prohibitive insurance premiums over the years.

If the findings of the EC investigation in any way indicate that all is not as it should be, then such irregularities must be rectified with immediate effect.

It is vital, in terms of how we run our lives, that we have a properly regulated and healthily competitive insurance industry.