Insurance Steering in the Irish Motor Trade Industry

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: First Class Honours (A), Trinity College Dublin - The University of Dublin, course: Law (LLB), language: English, abstract: This paper is an in depth look at the practice of insurance steering, a tactic employed by many insurance companies. This paper attempts to establish that this practice is anti-competitive nature, drawing on various aspects of Irish, European and American sources of competition and insurance law. Insurance Steering in the Motor Trade Industry is the practice by where insurers pressure, mislead and forcefully imply to consumers that they must use one of their 'approved' or 'preferred' repairers. While this practice benefits the insurance company, and often even the consumer due to financial incentives to take the insurers advice, it has led to many body-shops across the country being excluded. Any bodyshop not in this exclusive network of repairers have found themselves in a rather precarious position. While complaints have been made that this is anti-competitive and harming the market, as well as consumer welfare and choice, the claims have failed to be heard in Ireland.