People go on about being gouged by insurance, also without insight into the data.
I’m not a fan of high insurance premiums - obviously - but it is self-evident that insurance is a very competitive industry with a lot of players. If they’re all ripping us off, then all it would take would be a disruptive newcomer to the market offering policies for £hundreds less to clean up. They’d quickly have more business than they could cope with.
The only argument that works to explain artificially high pricing is that the insurance industry is a cartel. I find that hard to believe also, because of the aforementioned disrupter potential.
So yeah, I’m inclined to believe that insurance premiums are what they are because claims costs have gone up dramatically across the market, and premiums are a function of these total costs.
The insurance industry needs regulation for sure. Every time I hear about someone reporting a claim to their insurer they say they’re being punted off to an accident management company (why isn’t this the insurer themselves?) who are no doubt giving the insurer a kickback while they charge an exorbitant hire car rate to the third party insurer. Insurance claims seem to be treated as an opportunity for one insurer to exploit another, with the customer an afterthought.