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Mr Hodgson, that article shows the UK insurance industry is the largest in Europe and the third largest in the world with a total premium income in 2013 of $330 billion. Gulp.

Interesting that they don't state the net premiums for vehicles and that the £1.2 billion insurance fraud is not broken down by insurance area.

Using very basic figures - 19.6m households with insurance at £360 (late 2013) per premium = £7.056 billion. This of course excludes additional vehicles at each household plus commercial policies. Paid out in claims is £17.1m per day so multiply by 365 days = £6.2415 billion.

The £53m underwriting loss for motor insurance is interesting. It'd be nice if they quoted the profit from investment of those premiums. That aside, tag £5 onto each household's insurance and hey presto you have a circa £40m underwriting profit.

Let's assume £400m is the cost of motor fraud that the insurers do not perpetrate themselves. I picked this figure because, well, it's a complete guess as the ABI do not tell us what theirs are. By my ready reckoning that equates to about 5.7% of each premium (£400m as a proportion of £7bn premiums) and as an average premium in late 2013 was about £360 this would make fraud bottom out at £20.52 per premium. I suppose if you get rid of all of the staff engaged with RTA you might bump a saving up.

None of it adds up, especially when the insurers must be spending a fortune on advertising.

The above is of course idle conjecture in the absence of more detailed figures that could be properly scrutinised.