Insurance companies must be committing the greatest legal swindle in Malta, with the government’s blessing. Perhaps readers will consider this:

Someone drove into the back of my modest car last month, damaging it not too badly, but badly enough for me to want to repair it. I got an estimate from a panel beater, he said about e250.

I am comprehensively insured and have never put in a claim. At the insurance office I was told that at that price it would be cheaper for me to foot the costs myself, rather than open a claim. I asked for an explanation. Which was that apart from the ‘excess’ fee of about e58, my No Claims discount would ‘take a step down’. To re-insure comprehensively after opening the claim, I was told, it would cost me e788.86. The last payment I made for my comprehensive insurance, last November, was e461. The next payment due, if I do not open a claim, will be e396.18 Meaning that when charging me e788.86 to re-insure comprehensively, not only would my insurance company be recouping the e250 costs it would have borne to pay for my damage, but that it would actually also be making a profit, of e142.68. Which does not take account of the ‘excess’ fee.

It is maddening to think that all this has the blessing of the government, and of the Malta Financial Services ‘Authority’, which I am helping to keep in being, through my taxes. Are the regulators the government has set up, all of them, a sham?

I will not insure comprehensively again, of course. Comprehensive insurance is a fraud. Why should I? I must have paid my insurance some e1,500, probably more, in premiums since I bought the car new in 2006. All I got for it was free subscription in a tow company, whose services I have not used.

I am a careful driver, it does not pay me to insure comprehensively because being careful in my driving, I am sure I will not be at fault if I am involved in an accident. Meaning that the other driver’s insurance would have to pay. I will insure, maybe, for third party fire and theft risk, which, if I open the claim, I am told, will cost e354.06 (e178.83 if I do not open the claim). Maybe I will insure only for tat-triq risk, just for third party damages.

Roger Mifsud

Rabat