Terminals with touchscreen screens are quite fragile and we have to be very careful because a little inattention can end up with a scratched or cracked screen in the worst cases. For more than a year in Romania there has been insurance for smartphones, but abroad businesses of this kind have been operating for years. In France, the situation is quite difficult for insurance companies that sell insurance policies for iPhones or other smartphones because they find themselves, with loss due to the fragility of the terminals.
All insurance plans for mobile phones are deficient because of the iPhone, said one trader. We are facing both an increase in claims frequency and a higher average cost of claims. All this weighs on the technical results. Besides the iPhone is over-represented in the portfolio of insurers with respect to its actual weight on the market as it is expensive and fragile. Currently, 80 to 90% of claims relate to smartphones, says Catherine Lanson.
The representatives of the insurance companies say that they register losses of 35% in the insurance sector for smartphones and all because of the way they are built. Interestingly, the French pay between €30 and €130 annually for insurance that covers any kind of knocks, scratches, losses, thefts, etc. Of course, among them there are some who intentionally damage their terminals in order to receive new ones, and this is how insurance companies lose money from this business. Insurance companies estimate that around a quarter of insurance requests are frauds, a very large number considering a country like France.
It would be interesting to see what the situation is in Romania, where there are enough companies that offer similar services.
