INSURANCE RATES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9047, 5 February 1908, Page 5

INSURANCE RATES.

THE QUESTION OP ALL-ROUND' INCREASE. •

Yesterday's "Evening Post" says: —The Wairarapa Age is the authority for the statefnent that the fire insurance companies throughout the dominion have decided*to increase rates for insurance of all classes cf risk, and that "there is good reason to believe that the State Fire Insurance Department is prepared to raise its rates in acordance with the increase proposed by the private companies." Enquiries made in authoritative quarters this morning failed to elicit confirmation of the Wairarapa paper's statement, but it was generally admitted by several managers of private companies that the rates were much too low to be profitable, or even safely remunerative, considering the heavy, risks of big fires in any one of the four centres of the dominion. /.The private rates were cut low in expectation that the State was going to cut lower. This has not been the caseup to the present. The recent bush fires' have caused the year to open inauspiciously for all offices, and as a consequence the utmost caution, more so than usual in fact, is bting exercised in taking risks of every description. general manager of the State Fire Office (Mr Prindle) has received, no information from the Government of any rise of rates, so far as his office is concerned.

STATEMENTS SAID TO BE PREMATURE.

DUNEDIN, February 4. Local representatives when interviewed say that the statement that the fire insurance companies had practically decided to increase the rates .ip connection \yithvall classes, of risks was premature, though they admit the step cannot be long delayed. One manager stated that for the first time during the sixty years his company had been doing business in the dominion, the balance-sheets had showri -a debit for the-past two years. Another manager the opinion that the State Department was now beginning to feel its loss, and was anxiously waiting for the premiums to be increased.