Insurance Ireland is an association of companies covering more than 90% of the Irish motor insurance market. It provides to its members a system for exchanging information in order to detect fraud or exaggerated claims in the motor vehicle sector, which are valued at more than EUR 100 million per year. It also allows the risk profile of a customer to be assessed and subsequently the price of car insurance to be determined.
The European Commission launched an investigation regarding potential restrictions of access to its data-sharing platform, Insurance Link, for insurers established in other countries of the European Union. In 2019, it opened a formal investigation procedure regarding a potential infringement of Article 101 of TFEU.
In the context of this formal investigation, the association proposed to the Commission the following commitments aimed at closing down the procedure and avoiding sanctions:
- To make access to the Insurance Link information exchange system independent from membership of Insurance Ireland.
- To make the access criteria of its database and the cost fair, objective, transparent and non-discriminatory.
- To establish a new Insurance Link application procedure with a defined timeline that will be handled by an operationally independent Application Officer.
- To establish an independent appeal body for applicants that have been refused access.
The proposal was submitted to a market test to make sure it would remove competition concerns. Following the results of the market test, Insurance Ireland amended its initial commitments to specify the profile and role of the operationally independent Application Officer in charge of handling the access requests. It further clarified the implementation and monitoring of its commitments.
On 30 June 2022, the Commission accepted the commitments from Insurance Ireland to open its database to non-members and to apply fair criteria for access and prevent a possible hefty fine. The Commission made these legally binding for a period of 10 years under Article 9 of the EU Antitrust Regulation.
Such commitments procedure allows potential anticompetitive behaviour to be corrected in the future instead of punishing past behaviour. Its application is common in the IT sector and the digital economy. For example, in the Microsoft case (2009, IP/09/1941), the Commission accepted the company's commitment to give users a choice of browsers in the Windows operating system, thereby increasing the ease of use of competing browsers.
In case of non-compliance with the commitments, the Commission may impose a fine of up to 10% of the association’s annual turnover without having to prove an infringement of competition law.
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