Dear Other Insurance Companies...

Dear Other Insurance Companies,

Happy New Year!

We were already pretty excited for 2022 when we heard that the Financial Conduct Authority pushed through regulation against Price Walking, starting this year.

Imagine our surprise and delight when we heard that you had “welcomed” those changes too.

As you will already know, “Price Walking” means getting people in on cheap “new customer” deals, and then charging them increasingly more each year. It means that people who are loyal and auto-renew get charged on average an extra £456 every year.

No wonder some people called it a “loyalty tax”.

We’ve never Price Walked because it’s unfair and outrageous, and that’s not our thing. But we have to say, all you major insurance firms, some people might have thought you were against scrapping Price Walking.

Given the fact that you actually did it right up until the deadline. And given you’ve been doing it for years, overcharging your most loyal customers by £420 million a year for longer than we’ve been a company.

So it’s a pleasant surprise to see you welcoming these changes after all.

(In fact some of you are even advertising on your websites that you don’t charge differently for new and loyal customers, unlike the you of 2020, who did.)

As you get used to a life without Price Walking, we’ve had some other thoughts about making things fairer. Stuff we thought you’d be against, but now we think maybe you’ll…welcome?

Stuff we don’t do, but the rest of the industry does, like:

Scrapping cancellation fees - which like Price Walking’s whopping £4.2bn in ten years, would, on average, save people £37 per policy if they decide to cancel. Esure, Admiral and Hastings and the rest of you, you charge your customers to cancel their policies, isn’t it time we make the insurance industry fair and put a stop to this?

Or cutting out expensive premium finance or pricing based on age and profession. Because we all know how unnecessary those are.

Now, we know that there will be immense industry opposition to these, but given you seem to have “welcomed” the Price Walking changes, we hope you’ll join us in making the industry fairer - perhaps without waiting for the regulator this time.

Up for it?

Exciting times!

Yours,

Urban Jungle.