The Italian Competition Authority finds a cartel in the motor insurance market

The Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has recently closed the Case I744 GareRCA per Trasporto Pubblico Locale by fining two major insurance firms, Generali and Unipol Sai, for cartelizing the market for motor vehicles insurance. The cartel was implemented by the parties in the shape of a concerted practice. It was a single complex anti-competitive agreement aimed at coordinating the parties' conducts in relation to the competitive tender procedures organized by many local bus operators to select the provider of insurance coverage for their fleet of vehicles. The ICA observed a parallelism in the conducts of the parties. They refrained from bidding in competitive procedures and only the incumbent supplier bid in the successive negotiated procedures. In this way contracts were awarded to the incumbent supplier at much higher prices.
The other evidentiary pieces on which the ICA based its findings were the qualified contacts that the parties had through the working party of a trade association of which they were members and the documents showing that the parties exchanged sensitive data regarding their participation in the tender procedures. In addition, the ICA took the view that the conducts of the parties did not have any economic rationale or justification. They should have bid for all the tendered out contracts to win as many clients as possible, whereas they only bid in the procedures organized by their historical clients.
The ICA levied substantially high fine on the parties, € 12 million on Generali and almost € 17 million on UnipolSai. Indeed, the ICA viewed the collusion as hard-core. In addition, the parties were strong market players and according Italian law they were obliged to provide insurance coverage to bus operators. Therefore, the ICA increased the basis amount of the fines by 50% by applying the deterrence aggravating factor in the EU Commission Guidelines on fines.


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