Vehicle dealers are giving up on insurance sales due to over-regulation from the Government.

A survey by the RMI National Franchised Dealers Association (NFDA) reveals that since the Financial Services Authority started regulating insurance sales in 2005, dealers with full FSA authorisation have dropped from 76% to 54% now.

However, the percentage of dealers acting as insurance introducers - the least regulated option - has increased from 4% in 2005 to 17% today.

Louise Wallis, the NFDA's head of business development, said: “Many in the motor trade believe that they should never have been included in the regulations in the first place.

“The complexity and cost involved in being authorised is clearly putting many dealers off, as regulation of insurance sales has created a huge amount of extra paperwork. The volume and complexity of the paperwork is wildly disproportionate to the relative importance of insurance sales for their overall businesses. A number of dealers who originally opted for full FSA Regulation have now looked for alternatives for providing insurance to their customers.”

The NFDA said it was working with the FSA to try and simplify some of the more ‘complex and time consuming’ elements of the authorisation process.

  • A full copy of the NFDA FSA Insurance Survey 2007 is available to download as a pdf by clicking here.