On Radio101 this week, a representative of the Malta Financial Services Authority replied to points I made in a letter, Comprehensive insurance ‘scam’, which The Malta Independent published on 17 August.

In my letter I made the point that I am comprehensively insured, and that my insurance company told me that it would be cheaper for me not to open a claim but to pay for the damage (caused to the back of my car by someone ramming into it) myself, costing e250 to repair. At the time the car was parked, legally. I do not know who caused the damage, I was not there, and the man (or woman) drove off.

If I open a claim, I was told, my next premium for comprehensive insurance for my modest car would be e788.86, compared to e396.18 that I would pay if I do not open the claim. What this translates to is that my insurance company would not only recover, in the next premium payment due from me, all the repair costs it would have met, it would actually be making a profit of e142.68. And that is ignoring the ‘excess’ payment I am told I will have to make if I open the claim.

In the Radio 101 programme the MFSA representative kept referring to the law regulating the insurance business. He did not show much sympathy for my case and did not agree the insurance business is a scam, aspects of it anyway. That is the law, the insurer is not in breach of it, his drift was. No wonder consumers feel let down.

I mean, is it honest for an insurance company charging and getting such hefty payments, to make such unjust profits, especially in cases where there is no fault? Isn’t that unconscionable? It does not matter, the MFSA representative said, that I had never made a claim on my insurance before. Does not matter! What does? The MFSA representative sounded like an apologist for the insurers. So what if that is what the law says! If the law is unjust, have it changed.

Surely it is the job of the MFSA to advise the government about amendments needed where laws are innately unjust in its area of responsibility. Why does the MFSA allow consumers to be fleeced? Only consider. When parliament legislated, rightly, to make it obligatory for vehicles to be insured, it created a ready market for the insurers. But surely it cannot have intended that law to be a gold mine for the insurance companies!

Should not parliament ensure that its laws are just? The insurance law is surely not so! Parliament created the MFSA. It should breathe down the MFSA’s neck to ensure it is doing its job properly. In the case of consumers, the MFSA is failing them. It takes the side of the strong, not of the weak. Is no one responsible? Why are people appointed to head these so-called authorities on the basis not of their integrity or efficiency, but on the basis of whom they know in politics?

Roger Mifsud

Rabat