Influenced by the Toyota recall crisis, insurance companies in China have raised premium rates for the Japanese carmaker's most products, Changsha Evening News reported on Tuesday.
A Toyota car owner who seeks to renew his vehicle insurance told a reporter that he found premium rates given by the insurers he contacted have obviously risen.
One anonymous business manager from China Pacific Insurance told reporter in private that major insurance companies raised the prices for almost all Toyota models, some as high as 40 percent.
In more developed insurance markets, the common practice is that premiums for different models vary, so insurers need to have a firm grasp on automobiles' safety performances and maintenance costs in order to fix a price for its policies.
In the Toyota recall case, American insurers were the first to publicize the vehicles' safety flaws.
China's vehicle insurance industry, which has been caught in a price war, still has a long way to go in developing similarly advanced system, Luo Zhongmin, chairman of the Insurance Institute of China, pointed out.
