December the 21st, 2023 – At the end of this year, important changes to Croatian traffic insurance rules are set to come into force. The move has been made in the hopes of ending the monopoly insurance companies currently have.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ana Blaskovic writes, at the end of the year, changes to the law on mandatory Croatian traffic insurance will come into force.
Croatian insurers say that this is an important law which will work to properly protect those injured in traffic accidents, with the addition that some repair shops often try to charge too much for repairs and parts – and they want that to come to an end. At the same time, some of the workshops united within the Croatian Association of the Auto Industry (HUAS) have welcomed the law as an end to the monopoly of insurance companies.
Modernisation and development
The Croatian Insurance Office states that the new law will modernise and develop a system that has been adequately protecting owners or users of vehicles for decades. The upcoming Croatian traffic insurance changes relate primarily to the protection of injured parties in the case of cross-border insolvencies and more.
It regulates, for example, a new fixed initial period of fifteen days for the payment of compensation for damage to injured persons in case of the insolvency of an insurance company. There will also be minimum mandatory amounts of insurance coverage introduced, as well as vehicle insurance checks carried out by other EU Member States.
130,000 compensation claims are settled annually
HUO Director Hrvoje Pauković says that insurance companies annually conclude more than 2.7 million automobile liability insurance contracts, that more than 130,000 compensation claims are settled every year and that more than 220 million euros are paid out in the automobile liability segment. In line with that, there’s only a negligible number of court proceedings and petitions to the regulator.
Referring to the announcement made by HUAS, he pointed out that certain groups of service workshops “mislead the public by citing non-existent legal provisions” that can misinform consumers. The only parties in this relationship, which is based on non-contractual responsibility for compensation, are the injured person and the insurer, who must come to an agreement on the basis and amount of the damage. This is certainly not the function of a service workshop.
“The insurer is obliged to resolve the compensation claim by applying legal provisions, this refers also to the Law on Obligatory Relations. Then they must pay out compensation according to the appropriate prices that should be formed on the free market of goods and services, not those that would be the result of an association of repair service providers in order to impose higher price. That entire practice is very questionable when looking at it from the perspective of the rules of market competition”, they concluded from HUO.
