Australian Car Insurance Companies – What are you doing?

Good morning to all and in these Corona Virus times please stay safe.

I get feeds from online auto companies from all over the world, and try to provide information to you as I can.

This one from autoweek.com got my attention. I’m not trying to expand too much on the article, so will provide it as I’ve read it.

This just serves is to ask our Australian Car Insurance Companies as to what they’re doing or planning to do to assist the millions of Aussies who are doing it tough with this virus

“Since no one is driving, insurance companies have figured out no one is getting into car accidents either”

Allstate will return $600 million in premiums to its customers, saying most policy holders will get back 15% of their premium in April and May. It will be refunded via customers’ banks, credit cards or Allstate accounts, reports USA Today.

“This is fair because less driving means fewer accidents,” said Tom Wilson, Allstate chairman, president and CEO, in a statement.

American Family Insurance also announced it will return $200 million in premiums to its policyholders. The average relief check there will be about $100.

Our friends at Car and Driver talked to Geico, who said that it will be reimbursing its auto and motorcycle policyholders with a total of $2.5 billion. It will also offer a 15 percent credit on policies that are up for renewal between April 8 and October 7, which comes out to about $150 for each auto policy, and $30 for motorcycle policies.

USA Today also checked in with State Farm, which said it’s expected to make a statement by the end of the week, and Progressive is figuring out how to return some amount of premium to drivers, as well, “to reflect the decreased exposure that comes with less frequent driving.”

This needs to happen, now, from both the big insurance companies and the small ones. Not only are people driving less, there are fewer cars on the road to contend with when they do. The University of California-Davis released a study estimating that crashes have dropped by 50% since the lockdown went into effect. Most of us aren’t getting 50% of our premiums back.

Insurance companies need to extend this payback indefinitely. Even if we’re out and about in a month or so, which I don’t think we will be, everything will be different. There will be a certain amount of businesses that realize their people can work from home permanently, and those people won’t drive as much. There won’t be a glut of drivers going out Saturday evening or coming home late Saturday night. There won’t be 50,000 people headed downtown to a baseball game at the same time—more savings.

Will the paybacks extend after two months? Will premiums be down next year? We emailed a few insurance companies and predictably they came back with “we can’t say anything beyond the statements above.”

And the fact that no one is driving is a shame—because gas is so cheap there hasn’t been a better time to travel long distances in decades. If you need to go to the store, take the long route, take your now-cheaper-to-drive project car and fill ’er up while you’re out!

Time to step up Australian Car Insurance companies.