An evaluation of our guaranteed asset protection insurance intervention

Read Evaluation Paper 18/1 (PDF)[1]

We have published the first of a new series of evaluations of our past interventions. We committed to these in our Mission[2].

Background

In September 2015, we intervened in the add-on GAP insurance market with two measures to address harm identified in our General insurance add-ons market study[3]. We required provision of information by vehicle sellers to consumers and a pause in the sale process.

We believed that these measures together (time and information) would enable consumers to better assess whether they need GAP insurance and to shop around if they do.

Our evaluation

• Our intervention has had a positive impact. After our intervention, consumers now engage more with the decision-making process, with shopping around more than doubling.
• Significantly, our intervention has benefited consumers who do not want to buy GAP insurance as an add-on, or indeed at all. Add-on GAP insurance sales are 16%-23% lower than they would have been had we not intervened. Some consumers decide, on reflection, not to proceed with the purchase.
• Add-on GAP insurance can be a suitable purchase for consumers who value the product, and also value convenience and the opportunity to buy it in person. For those consumers, add-on prices are 2-3% lower than they would have been had we not intervened, albeit this impact is not as significant as we expected.

We have identified some lessons that we can apply to current and future work. In particular, the work helps improve our understanding of these types of interventions and how we estimate costs and benefits.

Read more about the effects of our intervention in our Evaluation Paper 18/1[1].[4]

For further details, you can read more in our Technical Annex to the report[5] and PwC Research’s consumer survey narrative report[6] and technical report.[7]

You can read about our framework for post-intervention evaluations[8].