There will be fewer vehicles with Daruvar licence plates on Croatia’s streets.
Last year brought significant changes to the vehicle insurance market in Croatia. Majority of insurers abandoned the 30-year-old system of calculating risk for trucks and decided to have just one zone which will cover the whole of Croatia, which means that for some owners the price of vehicle insurance has been halved, reports Poslovni.hr on January 18, 2017.
Owners of passenger cars have also benefited from the individualization of compulsory insurance market and greater range of offered products, according to a market survey conducted by the Croatian Competition Agency. The Agency says that the market, which includes 13 insurers and 2.2 billion kuna in annual insurance premiums, is “competitive and well-structured”. It adds that there are positive changes happening in terms of expanding the range of insurance products and services, which means that consumers now have a much better choice.
By considering Croatia to be just one insurance zone, instead of previous seven zones, more than half of the insurers have stopped discriminating owners according to their place of registration. Previously, for example, insurance for trucks registered in Daruvar would cost about 12,000 kuna, while those with licence plates from Zagreb or Krapina would have to pay 22,000 kuna a year. Croatian Competition Agency previously warned that such a system was illogical, since trucking companies operate within a national or EU market, and not within a regional context, and therefore the Agency believes that these changes “may have a positive impact on the competitiveness of individual trucking companies in Croatian and EU market”.
As for passenger cars, where just a few years ago there were almost no differences in the insurance premium about individuals, insurers now take into account the vehicle category, which has resulted in larger differences in prices and more choice thanks to the individualization of the insurance policies.
The insurers have also introduced a number of new criteria for calculating the price of car insurance, for example, the age of the driver, since experience has shown that drivers in their 30s and 40s represent lesser risk than young drivers. In addition to age, some insurers take into account car manufacturers and technical characteristics of each individual vehicle, and some even grant bonuses of more than 50 percent.
The car insurance market in Croatia is dominated by the largest insurer Croatia osiguranje, followed by Euroherc, Jadransko Osiguranje and Allianz Zagreb.
