Of the General Association of the German Insurance Industry (GDV) has announced the updated regional classes for the more than 400 registration districts in Germany. They apply immediately when new contracts are concluded, and generally from January 2023 for current motor vehicle insurance policies. In addition, new class limits were announced and justified.

In motor liability insurance, there will be higher regional classes for a total of 101 districts and the 10.1 million drivers registered there in the coming year. On the other hand, 67 districts and around 5.5 million drivers will benefit from better classification. For the other 244 districts and around 26.8 million people with motor liability insurance, the regional class of the previous year remains the same.

The current GDV regional statistics are also changing the regional classes for some motorists in comprehensive insurance – but for significantly fewer: For around 900,000 fully comprehensive and around 2.9 million partially comprehensive insured persons, lower, i.e. better, classifications will apply in future, for around 2.8 Millions of fully comprehensive and around 3.1 million partially comprehensive insured are worse off.

What do the regional classes mean?

The regional classes are calculated once a year by the GDV and reflect the damage balance of the 413 German registration districts. The decisive factor here is not where the damage occurred, but in which registration district the vehicle owner resides.

Motor Insurance/Regional Classes: Video

This is how the risk of damage works

The loss balances calculated in this way for the registration districts are actuarially converted into an index value that determines the respective regional class. Basically, the better the classification in the regional class, the cheaper it is on the insurance premium.

How many regional classes are there?

There are regional classes in liability as well as in partially comprehensive and fully comprehensive insurance. In liability, the regional classes range from 1 to 12, in the partially comprehensive from 1 to 16 and in the fully comprehensive from 1 to 9.

Where are the regional classes high, where low?

The regional classes are usually particularly high in the big cities. The traffic volume is highest there, so there are more accidents than in less densely populated areas. Damage caused by theft, vandalism or damage when parking is also more common in cities than in the country.

Who has the worst damage record?

In the current regional statistics, Berlin has the worst damage balance nationwide. In the capital, the damage is almost 40 percent above the national average. Drivers there therefore pay significantly more for car insurance than in other cities. High regional classes also apply in other large cities and parts of Bavaria.

“Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania achieve particularly good claims balances in motor vehicle liability insurance: Here, motorists cause less or less expensive damage than the national average,” says GDV General Manager Jörg Asmussen. The district of Elbe-Elster in Brandenburg has the best damage balance in Germany in terms of motor liability insurance – here the amount of damage is almost 30 percent lower than the average.

GDV recalculates class boundaries

To ensure that the regional classes bundle districts with damage balance sheets that are as similar as possible, the class boundaries are regularly checked and adjusted if necessary. This will result in new risk assessments for 168 of the 412 districts in 2023. “As every year, the changes balance each other out,” says Asmussen. The increases for the 101 districts mentioned are on average lower than the decreases for the 67 districts.

Many thefts drive up the hull damage and thus the regional classes in the big cities.

The reason for the recalculations is that many districts with different loss balances were recently classified in the lowest and highest regional classes. For the lowest regional class of motor vehicle liability insurance, the damage balance of a district must now be almost 22 percent instead of around 15 percent below the national average. As a result, only 24 instead of 55 districts reach the lowest regional class.

At the other end of the scale, the highest rating no longer starts at 20 percent, but only at around 30 percent above the average. Therefore, no longer 19 districts, but only Offenbach and Berlin are classified in the highest regional class. Districts with an average damage record continue to have regional class 6 in motor vehicle liability insurance.

What is the impact of changing the regional class?

However, it is not possible to predict in general terms what will actually change for the individual insured person as a result of an upgrade or downgrading of their regional class in the insurance premium. Wolfgang Schütz, Managing Director of the Verivox insurance comparison, explains: “The regional classes are not only based on the claims reported in the past year, but are determined over a longer period of time. That is why reclassifications from one year to the next are almost always only one class up or below. The additional contributions or savings for the individual drivers are usually less than ten percent.”

Many accidents have a lasting negative effect on cars in a given regional unit.

The amount of the insurance premium also depends on many other factors: “In addition to the regional classes, for example, changes in the type classes of the car model, general price adjustments by the insurer or a more favorable no-claims class if drivers have been accident-free all year round can have an impact on the premium have,” says Schütz.

Are the regional classes binding for insurance companies?

In addition, the regional classes of the GDV are not binding for the insurance companies. Many companies use their own models instead of regional classes to calculate the risk of damage in a registration district or place of residence, sometimes broken down to individual postcodes. An exact calculation of the contribution is therefore only possible for each insured person individually – for example with an online comparison calculator.

When is there a special right of termination in motor vehicle insurance?

However, it is important for the insured person to know that they have a special right of termination if the contribution increases due to a change in the regional class. However, this only applies if the regional class of the previous registration district has actually changed. If the regional class is changed as a result of moving from one registration district to another, there is no special right of termination.