General Insurance Article - Insurance customers should check quotes after IT outage

 It says the general insurance industry is showing signs of recovery following widespread pricing and quotability disruption on Friday July 19th after a flawed Windows update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike disrupted around 8.5 million devices around the world.

 Consumer Intelligence’s data shows price increases were recorded for 17 home insurance brands on Friday, with four recording average increases ranging from 32% to a whopping 65% for annual premiums. For one insurer, the average annual premium rose by £439. The disappearance of some key underwriters contributed to these increases.

 However by Saturday home insurance pricing appeared to stabilise, although further analysis is needed to understand the long-term impact. Quotability also took a hit but recovered relatively quickly. A number of brands experienced initial drops, which largely bounced back by Sunday 21 July.

 In motor insurance 25 brands showed price increases on Friday with increases likely to be a result of manual registration searches resulting from lookups failures, with others resulting from changes in underwriter availability. Quotability also dropped but the effect was marginal compared to home with only two brands significantly impacted and they recovered by the following day.

 In addition to pricing and quotability disruption, several brands continue to report disruption to their contact centres and live chat availability, which could cause ongoing frustration for customers, Consumer Intelligence says.

 Ian Hughes, Chief Executive of Consumer Intelligence says: “We have been monitoring the situation to help build an understanding of the impact for the general insurance industry. Notable disruptions seen on Friday include registration look up failures, underwriting changes causing huge price increases, and significant drops in quotability for a number of brands.”