RC AUTO
PRESS RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
Insurance companies found liable for concerted agreements. 700 billion lire fine imposed.
On 28 July 2000, the Competition Authority completed its investigation into the motor vehicle insurance market, finding them liable for anti-competitive behaviour by two distinct course of conduct. For the most serious offence, the Authority imposed fines totalling approximately 700 billion lire.
The investigation began about 10 months ago following evidence gathered by the Customs and Excise police (Guardia di Finanza) which revealed that 15 of the leading motor vehicle insurers practised identical terms and conditions of insurance: all the companies investigated refused to provide fire and theft insurance separately from third party liability insurance. Investigations subsequently revealed that the insurance companies had been exchanging large volumes of strategic information through a third company. The Authority therefore extended the ongoing investigation in order to see whether this exchange of information might constitute an anti-competitive agreement, at the same time broadening the investigation to include numerous other insurance companies.
The investigation therefore focused on two different types of anti-competitive agreement.
With regard to the general refusal to provide fire and theft cover separately from third party liability cover, the Authority ascertained that the reason why all the companies acted in parallel on this particular market was because they had concluded a concerted agreement to oblige their insured to take out insurance cover against unrelated risks, thereby distorting competition.
The Authority judged this exchange of information between such a large number of insurance companies (about 40) in the branch of motor vehicle insurance to be a particularly serious offence. This agreement had taken the form of a complex and well-organised concerted practice between competing insurers, which infringed section 2 (2) of the Competition Act (Law No 287/90), and gave rise to widespread, extensive and prolonged exchanges of sensitive information on third party liability and other types of motor vehicle insurance premiums. This was a serious violation of competition legislation in terms of the magnitude, the level of detail and the frequency of the information exchanged, which related, inter alia, to the commercial and contractual terms and conditions applied by each insurance company to its own insured, and in terms of the large number of companies involved in the practice, accounting for about 80 percent of the total motor vehicle insurance industry. This information circuit, which had been institutionalized by the insurance companies through the incorporation of a third company, and particularly by their membership of specific monitoring entities set up for the purpose, made it possible for them to set commercial insurance premiums at a higher level than would otherwise have been the case on a competitive market. The agreement had been put in place just prior to liberalization (1993) which was therefore a highly sensitive moment for this particular branch of insurance, coming at a time when the companies were supposed to exploit the newly created opportunities to develop a properly competitive market.
In consideration of these particularly serious aspects of the offence, and the length of time it had been committed, the Authority imposed following fines (in lire):
| Allianz Subalpina | 15,563,969,006 |
| Assimoco | 1,160,332,075 |
| Assitalia | 52,985,054,147 |
| Augusta | 2,094,039,401 |
| AXA | 32,668,659,589 |
| Azuritalia | 878,383 |
| Bayerische | 3,053,583,613 |
| BNC | 3,187,271,766 |
| Commercial Union | 1,248,196,618 |
| Duomo | 2,097,354,376 |
| Fata | 3,105,818,162 |
| Fondiaria | 32,926,045,327 |
| Gan | 8,469,660,868 |
| Generali | 59,137,453,396 |
| Helvetia | 4,078,666,185 |
| Italiana | 3,791,566,344 |
| ITAS | 1,245,183,198 |
| Lloyd Adriatico | 50,897,996,960 |
| Lloyd Italico | 7,301,075,421 |
| Maeci | 1,962,203,294 |
| Mediolanum | 1,206,406,969 |
| Meie | 12,124,835,089 |
| Milano | 39,814,482,037 |
| Nationale | 2,014,707,844 |
| Nuova MAA | 7,452,978,416 |
| Nuova Tirrena | 15,762,140,611 |
| Piemontese | 1,645,447,122 |
| RAS | 94,769,616,966 |
| Reale Mutua | 22,995,966,031 |
| Royal Insurance | 673,930,143 |
| Royal & SunAlliance | 2,305,758,961 |
| Sai | 70,328,409,529 |
| Sara | 14,029,013,318 |
| Toro | 31,234,699,457 |
| Unipol | 33,050,995,425 |
| Vittoria | 3,860,317,679 |
| Winterthur | 41,230,512,384 |
| Zurigo | 18,369,282,494 |
Rome, 31 July 2000