Car insurance prices in August remained static, showing a month-on-month increase of just 0.3%. This follows a drop of 5% in the previous month, suggesting that relative price stability is at last returning to the market. This data is produced by car insurance comparison site Tiger.co.uk as part of its Tiger Watch programme. Tiger Watch is a monthly insurance price monitor that looks at hundreds of car insurance quotes each month across a number of different driver profiles in order to estimate changes in policy pricing.
The data provides relatively good news for Britain’s motorists, following two years of high levels of insurance inflation. However not all drivers are benefitting. Tiger Watch reports that its 45-year old male driver and 55-year-old female driver profiles experienced monthly inflation levels of 3% and 4% respectively. Conversely other groups, most notably younger male drivers, saw their premiums fall by around 1%.
However year-on-year inflation is still estimated to be running at over twice the pace of RPI, with August 2011 prices being 10.5% higher than those of August 2010 as the high levels of inflation experienced in particular across the second half of 2010 continue to feed through to any drivers now renewing their policies.
Again there are winners and losers within the year-on-year statistics, with the 25 and 45 year old male driving profiles seeing their car insurance quotes increase by 24% and 30% respectively. As witnessed in the July Tiger Watch data, The 35 year-old female cohort again saw a year-on-year decrease in costs of about 9%.
A spokesperson for Tiger.co.uk welcomed the apparent stability that is returning to the motor insurance market: “Tiger Watch gives us a regular and timely snapshot as to what is happening to insurance premiums in the UK. In July we saw policy prices drop by 5% and with sub-RPI increases seen in August, for the time being at least the massive increases in motor insurance rates that we saw across 2010 and early 2011 have eased. In fact when we compare pricing in the last two quarters, costs are remarkably static, showing just a 0.06% increase.
Annual inflation, although declining, remains in double digits. That is why we would encourage all motorists to compare car insurance prices at renewal using an independent comparison site like Tiger.co.uk and to make sure that they look at not just buying cheap car insurance, but at getting the right level of cover too.
