Motor vehicle insurance companies just want to make money!

Motor vehicle insurance companies just want to make money!

February 06, 2016
Muhammad Ahmad Al-Hassani
Muhammad Ahmad Al-Hassani

Muhammad Ahmad Al-Hassani

Muhammad Ahmad Al-Hassani
Okaz

I would like to focus on vehicle insurance policies. In the beginning, a driver’s license needed to be insured, then a few years later the insurance was transferred to vehicles. The reason was because some Saudis have several cars but only one driver’s license. The companies wanted to make more profit and increase their income.

Today, we have many insurance companies in the market and all of them increase their annual premiums every now and then. Some have been praised for their swift compensation procedures while others have been criticized for being slow in finalizing insurance settlements. Some companies have only lowered the price of their premiums after their competitors raised prices. The former wanted to attract more customers with lower prices.

Unfortunately, these companies deliberately delay paying compensation to their customers and keep putting them off from one day to another. They exert great effort to find loopholes in the contracts in order not to pay any compensation. Sometimes, they succeed in wriggling out of any liability and other times they fail. If they fail, they will not pay compensation fast and keep delaying it as much as they can.

These are not just accusations. All the statements mentioned here are true and have been circulated in social media and in newspapers which often carry articles on this subject.

I recently learned that if a vehicle is sold a few days or hours after being insured, the new owner cannot use the insurance if he causes an accident and a third party sustains damage. The insurance company does not recognize the right of the new owner to the vehicle insurance that was bought a few hours or days before the car was sold. I do not know the reason for this.

This means that the new owner has to buy a new insurance policy and pay SR1,000 despite the fact that the car has already been insured. Even if the new owner is under the age of 21, the insurance companies should not require the new owner to buy a new insurance policy. Instead, they can require him to pay extra fees if he is under 21. Why does the validity of the periodic vehicle inspection not expire when the vehicle is sold to another person? What does the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency think about this issue?


February 06, 2016
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