José Galamba de Oliveira, president of Portugal’s association of insurance brokers, has told Lusa that premiums will “unfortunately” be increasing this year, as a result of inflation. His actual words were that there were “a lot of things conditioning” the situation – but inflation is the principal reason, as well as the increase in people’s salaries. He explained that a simple accident these days involves an increase in costs for insurance companies of between 20%-30% – and up till now this increase has not been passed on to clients.