Progress

I have been moaning for years about the way that insurance companies crank up one's premiums every year, perhaps knocking a bit off if you phone up and make a fuss or threaten to terminate. I was particularly annoyed that the Halifax Building Society - once a cuddly mutual which existed to serve its members  - was an egregious offender.

It seems that lots of other people have been moaning about this, some effectively, with the result that the Financial Conduct Authority has now published new rules banning the practise known as price walking. That is to say gradually pushing up the prices charged to long standing customers for home and motor insurance who look unlikely to make a fuss. Perhaps, particularly, older customers who don't understand or can't be bothered with all this price comparison lark.

These new rules are to be found at reference 2. 217 pages of new rules which look as if lots of expensive lawyers have made good money from writing them. New rules which very much need the gloss provided by the FT at reference 1 to make them intelligible to the lay reader.

PS 1: my new-to-me Webster's tells me that egregious comes from the Latin, literally meaning standing out from the herd. In Latin, grex, gregis, noun masculine.

PS 2: the FT also says that the insurance companies made all their profits from these long standing customers. And spent near a third of their premium income on trying to pull in new customers. Which doesn't sound to me like markets working the magic whereby everyone is a winner that our fat leader and his friends (like Paul Dacre of reference 3) attribute to them. Maybe they don't believe it either: it's just a yarn they tell to keep us quiet while they rip us off.

Reference 1: Insurance/regulation: counting the cost of a loyalty rip-off ban: Stamping out the loyalty penalty will force companies to adopt more rational pricing strategies - Opinion Lex/FT - 2021.

Reference 2a: https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/policy/ps21-5.pdf.

Reference 2b: General insurance pricing practices market study: Feedback to CP20/19 and final rules: Policy Statement PS21/5 - Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) - 2021.

Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/union-jack.html.