The number of bike thefts will nearly double in 2022 because we’re on the road more often after lockdowns and leave our bikes unattended. At the ANWB, the country’s largest bicycle insurer, the number of thefts has risen from six thousand in 2021 to eleven thousand this year. Expensive e-bikes are especially popular. The ANWB will then significantly increase the premiums.
The number of stolen bicycle parts that are claimed to the ANWB after theft has also increased in 2022: to around a hundred a week, up from fifty a year earlier. In the last year, the insurer also took in about 10% more policyholders, but that increase is dwarfed by the extra thefts.
The ANWB thinks that the increase is mainly due to the fact that we are traveling more often than in 2021 and 2020, years of harsh lockdowns. But before the corona virus, the number of bicycle thefts barely exceeded five thousand. The ANWB expects this trend to continue in the coming years.
Along with the number of thefts of expensive e-bikes, the damage burden for the ANWB is increasing. In 2021 it was still 1,900 euros per claimed bicycle, this year it is already 2,000 euros. “This puts pressure on insurance premiums,” says ANWB spokesman Klaas Kregel. “They will then be indexed next year. This means an increase in premiums of at least 9 percent.”
The gangs transport bicycles abroad
According to the ANWB, the extra thefts are not committed by drug addicts from the city, but by organized international gangs. They quickly transport stolen bicycles abroad.
Some of the customers have a track-and-trace chip fitted to their bike. “Then some of the bikes are found, often in shelters, sometimes completely disassembled and wrapped in plastic for transport overseas,” Kregel says.
Three out of ten bicycles are recovered
Chips are not a direct solution to the increase in theft. In the end, three out of ten bicycles are found within a few days. “Organized bike thieves also have the tools to remove tracking chips.”
The ANWB hopes that bicycle manufacturers find a standard solution where tracking chips are fitted to the bicycle. Insurer ANWB also encourages cyclists to use more than one lock and to carry parts such as batteries with them when leaving the bike.
