According to the Polish Insurance Guarantee Fund’s estimations, there may be about 80-90,000 vehicles in use without a valid MTPL policy, which is 0.4 – 0.5% of all registered vehicles. This percentage places Poland among the CEE countries with the highest degree of insurance coverage, together with Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
In demographic terms, male drivers under 25 years old are the largest share of uninsured car owners, at an almost double rate than of the 30 years old category. Young women (<25) are somehow less inclined to drive without an MTPL policy, the share of uninsured drivers in this category outpacing the 30 years drivers uninsured percentage by just 50%.
High fines for lacking insurance (up to EUR 1,000 for passenger cars), as well as legal provisions that establish that accidents or collisions caused by uninsured vehicles have to be compensated by the owners of those vehicles are some of the most effective tools in fighting uninsured driving in Poland. Moreover, according to the Insurance Guarantee Fund representatives, in most cases lack of MTPL insurance cover is rather an oversight or a lack of knowledge of regulations than intentional and is mostly related to the change of ownership of old cars: MTPL insurance is renewed automatically at the end of each year if a policyholder pays premiums for the entire year, but if the vehicle is sold, the MTPL policy will not be automatically extended and the new owners may not be aware that they are not insured.
„The fund has developed its own tools to identify the uninsured, primarily thanks to information obtained by comparing the nationwide database of policies and the Central Register of Vehicles. This way, i.e. without direct contact with the car owner – we detect more than 75% of cases of the lack of the MTPL policy annually”, Hubert Stoklas, vice president of the Insurance Guarantee Fund said.
The Fund’s policy database is searched by special algorithms that detect the lack of insurance at the time of inspection and previous delays in the purchase of MTPL, as well as delays in entering into MTPL insurance when registering the car in Poland for the first time. In 2018, the Fund has identified over 93,000 uninsured vehicles, 16% more than a year before.
