Oman car owners hit by higher motor insurance premiums

Muscat: The cost of car insurance premium has gone up by 10  percent to 15 percent in the last couple of months, according to the insurance companies based in Oman.

Insurance companies say the premiums went up on account of the rising volume of compensation due to increasing number of claims.

Confirming this, Faisal Ba Omar, Director of Territories at Dhofar Insurance Company, said:  “Vehicle insurance prices have increased in the range of 10 to 15 percent over the previous months.”

Bader Al Marzouqi from the National Insurance Company, said, “The third party insurance prices of saloon and four-wheel drive vehicles have increased from OMR42 to OMR45, according to several factors, including the rising volume of claims for traffic accidents.”

He said: “There are other reasons for raising the cost of vehicle insurance, including natural disasters, increase in spare part prices, vehicle repair workshops costs and others.”

According to Faisal Ba Omar, the insurance prices depend on several factors, including the age of the car – whether they are new or used.

The car insurance prices have been divided into three categories. In the first category are those cars “whose purchase value is less than OMR15,000; second, there are cars whose prices fall between OMR15,000 and OMR25,000, and third, those cars that have been bought for OMR25,000 and above.”

“So every category has  an insurance price tag,” Faisal said, adding that the insurance price is also determined according to the type and classification of cars -- Korean and Japanese cars have a different insurance price tag from European or American cars because the prices of spares for each category varies greatly.”

“The insurance price also varies according to the option exercised by the policy holder -- whether he wants to get his car repaired, in the event of an accident or something similar, at an authorised workshop or in any local workshop, where the cost of repairs is not uniform.

"Then there is another choice available to the policy holder – whether the policy holder wants to get his damaged spares replaced by first-class spare parts or original but used spare parts. However, the final decision regarding all this remains with the policy holder and the cost of the premium depends on the choice that the policy holder opts for,” Faisal said.

Faisal confirmed that the third party insurance price for saloon and four-wheel drive vehicles (number of passengers 4 + 1), was OMR44 earlier, which has now escalated to OMR47.