Without a year OSAGO – Newspaper Kommersant No. 68 (7513) dated 04/19/2023

The State Duma adopted in the first reading a bill giving the right to Russian motorists to issue an OSAGO policy for a period of one month. The current minimum period of one year is not always convenient for drivers, the authors of the amendments explain. The White House and the Bank of Russia supported the amendments only “conceptually” and suggested thinking about the mechanism for applying such policies in order to exclude cases of insurance fraud. Insurers who opposed the initiative have already warned that monthly CMTPL prices will be high.

Amendments to the law on OSAGO, which were considered by the State Duma on Tuesday, were submitted to parliament in June 2022 by the LDPR faction. Under current rules, the term of the contract is one year, but there are a number of exceptions. So, you can buy twenty-day insurance in case a citizen needs to get by car from the place of purchase to the place of registration with the traffic police (for example, from one city to another). Owners of cars registered abroad and temporarily used in the Russian Federation conclude auto insurance contracts for the period of using the vehicle, but not less than five days.

Citizens who use the car only in the summer can purchase the so-called seasonal limited use policy: with it you can drive a car for three months a year.

All of these options are used “extremely rarely,” Yaroslav Nilov, head of the Duma committee on social policy, said when introducing the bill. In the explanatory note, the LDPR deputies talk about “situations when a policy is needed for a short period of time, for example, for a trip or driving a car to another city (if the car is not used.— “b”)”. “In this case, the driver must conclude a contract for one year, and then terminate it,” the deputies write. . rub.”. Parliamentarians also refer to their own data, according to which in 2021 in 39 subjects of the federation, including Moscow, the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, the Krasnodar Territory, an increase in the number of cases of driving a car without OSAGO was detected.

“According to various estimates, the number of motorists who drive on the road without policies or acquire false documents, at the risk of being prosecuted or becoming the perpetrators of an accident, is 3-4 million people,” the deputies say.

The government and the Central Bank supported the “concept” of the bill, Nikolai Tsed, a member of the United Russia Financial Market Committee, said Tuesday, speaking in parliament. At the same time, according to him, there are “moments” that need to be finalized when preparing amendments for the second reading.

In particular, short-term insurance “is characterized by increased risks of an insured event and fraud,” the government states in its opinion. “It is necessary to provide for the possibility of independent determination by the insurer of the tariff policy for short-term OSAGO contracts, as well as to give the right to insurers to set a delay in the start of such contracts,” the White House believes. They are sure that it is more logical to finalize the already existing norm, allowing to conclude “seasonal” OSAGO with a period of using the car for a month. Another option is proposed by the Duma Committee on the Financial Market: to increase from 20 days to a month the validity period of contracts for newly purchased cars (and driven to another city), specifying the list of cases when such a policy can be applied.

The Russian Union of Motor Insurers (RSA) opposed the changes. They indicate a possible violation of the rights of other road users if the owner of a vehicle with a short-term OSAGO decides to drive outside the agreed period.

Today, “three-month” OSAGO covers the whole year. And if the owner of such a policy becomes the culprit of an accident in an unforeseen period, the victim in the accident will still receive a payment, and the insurer will then send a recourse claim to the culprit. “OSAGO with a validity period of one month beyond its scope does not provide victims with protection,” warns the president of the RAMI Evgeny Ufimtsev. “The obligations of the insurance company under the contract will cease from the date the contract expires.”

“Probably, the number of those car owners who forget to renew the OSAGO policy for a new period in time will probably increase,” suggests Aleksey Tyurnikov, project manager for the development and development of auto insurance products at Absolut Insurance, “There will be more cases when the victim will have to do it on his own and, possibly, through the court to resolve the issue of compensation for damage with the culprit of the accident, for which the term of the OSAGO contract has expired. For insurance companies, the burden of accompanying clients under OSAGO when renegotiating contracts will increase.”

“Short-term contracts are, in principle, more unprofitable than contracts for a year,” the PCA explained. “The average payment for short-term OSAGO contracts, in which the period of use falls in the warm season, at the end of 2022 is 112.4 thousand rubles, which about one and a half times higher than the average payment in the whole of the Russian Federation. This means that the premium for a contract with a term of one month will be noticeably more than 1/12 of the value of an annual contract.” A twenty-day policy now costs 20% of the price of an annual policy, a three-month one costs half the cost, Mr. Tyurnikov adds.

Ivan Buranov