As if it’s not enough to increase the health insurance rates of the people, now even the car insurance premiums are rising. In Florida, State Farm recently announced that they will be increasing premiums by 9.2% for their Mutual customers and 11.8% for their Fire & Casualty customers.

Not only that, Allstate has also approved a 16% rate increase for their Fire & Casualty division which has already began last January 11, 2010. That means that an average customer will experience an increase of $82 for their 6 month policy.

According to Jack McDermott of the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR), there is a growing trend of bodily injury claims. There also seems to be a greater number of PIP or Personal Injury Protection (Florida No-Fault) expenses, as well as fraud.

Chris Neal, a spokesperson for State Farm, stated that since late 2005 until 2009 overall premiums for auto insurance have actually decreased 1%. However, the rising number of bodily injury and property damage claims, pip claims and fraud has led the largest insurer to begin raising rates.