New 2% Insurance Levy announced

The Minister for Finance published a bill today which will result in higher insurance premiums for all of us, to pay for Quinn Insurance.

A levy of 2% on all non life and non health insurance policies will be introduced before year end. This will affect Car, Home,Professional Indemnity and Travel insurance (any many more beside).

Quinn estimate that they will need to receive €600m from the State run 'Insurance Compensation Fund' to meet their solvency requirements.......the problem is that this fund only currently holds €40m.

The levy is estimated to bring in €65m annually. When you consider that we have already bailed out the banks into the tens of billions, i don't know why a 'paltry' sum like €600m couldn't be found by another method. Ultimately we are all paying for one mans massive gamble on Anglo Irish share's, why not lump it into the debt we have for the banks rather than further hurt people by levying things that we are obliged to purchase.

FS

What the sale of Quinn Insurance could mean to you

Today Quinn Insurance announced a 2009 loss of €706 million. The troubled insurer will be sold to Anglo Irish Bank and Liberty Mutual who will operate the company as a going concern, this is good news to its 1500+ employees but may not be good news for our car and home insurance premium's.

Due to the massive loss its likely that Quinn will have to make use of the Insurance Compensation Fund, to fund this, the government could place a further levy of 2% on all non life assurance policies. More will be known later on this year.

FS