Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 4 April 2019
67. Deputy Michael McGrath asked the Minister for Finance his views on the CSO report on indexing business insurance prices; his plans to roll out such an index; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15952/19]
View answerI welcome the publication of the CSO’s report on the feasibility of collecting price information on the cost of insurance to businesses, which was published in February 2019.
Increasing the availability of data in relation to Employer and Public Liability Insurance is a matter which was discussed by the Cost of Insurance Working Group and its Report on the Cost of Employer and Public Liability Insurance (2018) recommends a number of actions to improve transparency in this area. Among these, Recommendation 1 requires the Central Statistics Office to consider the feasibility of collecting price information on the cost of insurance to businesses with this exercise to commence by the end of Q2 2018, with the CSO to report to my Department with the outcome of its review, and if it considers such an index feasible, make appropriate proposals.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) submitted its report to the Cost of Insurance Working Group (CIWG) in January 2019 in this regard. In that report, the CSO identified seven potential methods of collecting price information on liability insurance. These data collection options were assessed against four criteria: (i) statistical quality, (ii) burden on respondents, (iii) meeting user needs, and (iv) cost. After analysing each of the options, the CSO found that four options were unfeasible and two further options, while technically feasible, would be extremely difficult to implement in practice. However, the CSO signalled to the CIWG that it will further examine a method that may be feasible. I understand that this method would use a commercially available technology solution to automatically price a high volume of representative profiles, i.e., customer profile such as an office-based company with 20 employees, good safety standards and no claims history, etc. The price quotations for these profiles would be tracked over time to estimate the overall change in premiums.
By way of update to the Deputy, this further examination is currently under way, and it is expected that the CSO will provide the CIWG with a final determination on feasibility during the summer months of this year. On the basis that it will be the CSO that makes proposals to the CIWG, regarding the feasibility of this potential approach, I will await the completion of this work, and the views of the CIWG following from that, prior to making a decision on the introduction of such an index.
