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A review of the Motor Accidents Authority (MAA) was released this week and some parties are not happy with the findings.

The NSW Parliamentary Law and Justice Standing Committee released its eleventh review into the MAA and the Motor Accidents Council (MAC) on Tuesday.  A copy of the report is no longer available.

Amongst other things, the report found that for the last five years there is a gap between the profit insurance companies project for the purpose of setting greenslip premiums and the profit they actually make.

The NSW Bar Association says that this represented a fundamental flaw in the greenslip scheme in NSW and, along with the NSW Greens, has called for an overhaul of the scheme.

The Insurance Council of Australia argues that the higher profits result from fewer claims on the scheme.

There is an interesting article in today’s The Daily Telegraph by Andrew Clennell, titled “Battle of $77 green slip lift”.  The article says that the State Government, through the Motor Accidents Authority (MAA), is pushing back on requests by insurers for increased CTP greenslip premiums.

Under the current legislation, the MAA may reject a premium proposed by an insurer if, in its opinion, the premium will not fund liabilities under the scheme, the premium is excessive or the premium does not comply with guidelines issued by the MAA.

If the MAA and the insurer are not able to reach agreement on the premium, the matter may be resolved by an arbitrator agreed on by the parties, or in the absence of agreement on an arbitrator, by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART).

As at June 1998, there were 13 insurers licensed to issue greenslips in NSW. Today there are 7 licensed insurers.

The licensed insurers are AAMI, Allianz, CIC Allianz, GIO, NRMA, QBE & Zurich.

The 7 insurers are controlled by 5 companies. Suncorp owns GIO and AAMI. Allianz also owns CIC Allianz.

In the current debate about insurer profitability we need to keep sight of the fact that the State Government can not afford for any of the current insurers to withdraw from the scheme.

A reduction in the number of insurers, or companies which own them, could reduce competition, placing even greater pressure on greenslip prices.

Hi I’m 29 years old. My greenslip renewal slip from AAMI for this year quoted me $421.00 which is exactly $100 more than what I paid for last year. I did an online quote on this website and all other insurers quoted around the same price. NRMA is the cheapest at $2.08 less than AAMI. Unusual for NRMA to be cheaper than AAMI, might have been the fact that I’m an NRMA member. I’m obviously a year older now and a bit wiser than I was last year so why I am getting slugged a hundred bucks more despite the fact that I have a 65% maximum no claim bonus rating, driving for more than 10 years and no accidents in the last 5. Does that not have any bearing at all?

Are insurance companies not making enough money as it is?? I checked this website earlier and it did explain that insurance companies changed the age threshold for high risk drivers from under 25’s to under 30’s. I also did another online quote on this website and put my age as 30. Voila! GIO gave me the cheapest quote at $356.68 and with the best cover. But still – I am paying less when I was 28 than I will be at 30. This does not make any sense to me at all. This exercise only proved the fact that I am still a year away from being in the “non-high risk” category. There’s an emerging pattern here. When I was 24, I longed to be 25 so I can pay less insurance. Now that I’m over 25, I’m still paying more! Now I long to be 30 so I can pay less. But what’s next??

Let me guess, insurance companies will change the high risk category to under 35’s?? Why is my age group being targetted?? Fair enough there’s a handful of hoons in my newly expanded age group but there’s also a lot of sensible drivers in this age group that do not deserve to be punished for a handful of people being stupid. Is it my own fault I was born in 1979? Is it our fault that the RTA gave a passing mark to these drivers that had accidents on NSW roads? There is clearly some degree of prejudice here. At this rate, there will probably come a time that I’m already 55 and I’m still in the high risk category. Then I’m just a few years away from another high risk category – the mature age group. (Now I’m not very sure about this, please correct me if I am wrong.) Insurance companies – clean up your act. Stop taking us ordinary motorists for a ride and expecting us to just cop it in the chin. We only want what is fair.