FIRE INSURANCE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2202, 28 May 1908, Page 1

FIRE INSURANCE.

REPORTED RISE IN RATES

‘A FLIGHT OF IMAGINATION.”

(Press Association.) 1 AUCKLAND,. May 27

Regarding a telegram received from Wellington intimating, “on excellent authority,” that a general advance ill premium rates would be made by insurance companies next spring, inquiries have been made among a number of local gentlemen- interested in tlte insurance business, and- from the replies,to questions put it is inferred that no* importance whatever is attached to such a statement. One gentleman expressed tho opinion that the telegram was someone’s brilliant imagination. It was .also pointed out that a conference of underwriters was held in Wellington quite recently, and that though the question of premiums had been unsettled for some, time, nothing, in the direction of an increase transpired at the conference.

Another gentleman stigmatised the suggestion as absurd, and lie also, attributed it to a flight of fancy. There was a’general feeling, he said, " that rates'were too low, aiid the companies in Now Zealand were losing money.He did not think that there was any thought of an increase, at anyrate it had not reached concrete form. He regarded it as .an improbable thing for any insurance authority to say. Still another gentleman, prominently indentified with the insurance business in- Auckland, who was spoken to on the question, added, “I can’t say anything about * it- at all. The whole thing came -as a complete surprise to me, and is the first I have heard of anything of the sort.”