The Insurance Racket 

Keen-eyed readers may have noticed my absence of late – nothing more serious than taking a chill pill (actually a long holiday). I have finally stopped reading any of the other sceptical sites (except I’m still obviously reading TNC as it isn’t so predictable, and has a spark of humour and originality) and am generally letting things, over which ultimately I have no control, gently wash over me. 

Even our outgoing PM seems to have stopped writing to me for advice, and as for the rumours of a general election, complete with rejigged constituencies, here in Hull I’ve had only a single leaflet from the sitting Labour MP who ambitiously promises, if re-elected, to solve several national problems – all it has to be said well above her pay grade (although obviously not mentioning those loveable economic migrants that are holed up in the Royal Station Hotel and elsewhere). I seriously doubt any of the other candidates will bother to drop in a leaflet now. Sorry Reform UK, you’ve almost certainly lost my vote. STOP PRESS – Labour have just delivered another two Union Jack style leaflets (my God, the innocent trees they are slaughtering! The fascistic overtones of the flag!) 

However, something has inspired me to deliver a new rant – and it’s Insurance (not motor insurance though, please don’t get me started on that barrel of incompetence and nastiness). 

I’m sure most TNC readers will share my aversion to hard luck and sob stories, with the hapless victims and their relatives, always quite predictably these days, reaching out for financial assistance through crowdfunding. My equally predictable response is always ‘get on your bike, I’m not responsible for your lack of foresight in not having insurance cover’. Dear reader, how things have changed! (N.b. I’m still not handing over my cash to those with no self-respect, nor to their dysfunctional families who don’t, or won’t, dig deep enough themselves). 

It all started when my annual multi trip travel insurance provider (that I’ve now had for many years but never made a claim) informed me that my premium would be doubling, with a lame and largely unintelligible explanation of why. My reaction was swift – I cancelled it. If I die on holiday abroad then the local authorities there can deal with my unwanted and rapidly putrefying body. If I’m taken seriously ill, or badly injured, I’ll just have to seek local treatment with my credit card (or fly back home into the caring arms of our world-class NHS, n.b. sarcasm fully intended). 

Next up, the buildings and contents insurance premium (already expensive in my opinion) has gone up by another £100. Now the prospect of seeking a cheaper policy or, God forbid, having my hopes raised and then dashed by various online comparison sites (after spending hours keying in information that I know full well their actuaries will have readily available, and will probably only later invalidate any future claim that I might make if I accidentally say my property last flooded in 1959 rather than 1969, half a century before I bought it, and also well before a tidal barrier was constructed to protect Hull – but as usual I digress). 

The £1million total loss rebuilding cover (assuming that I could ever access this without them invoking little known small print trip wires) sounds good, but less so when considering that easily a third of that would be required merely for a pastiche replication of the front facade of my listed building home, that in back of beyond ‘Ull still wouldn’t sell for more than the cost of the new frontage. OK, I could insure for £5million, if I could afford the premium, but would the Insurer really pay out £5million to rebuild a property that would still be worth less than ten percent of that? I strongly suspect not, and would rather not put it to the test. Contents insurance is similarly fraught with pitfalls, that common sense suggest would make any claim an ordeal (particularly the dubiously low limit on single items, without taking out expensive additional separate cover for various possessions, and yet again the strong suspicion that any claim wouldn’t be dealt with swiftly or in the way the insured themselves thinks it should according to their insurance industry outsider common sense a.k.a. naive thinking). 

It gets worse. Why are those who take responsibility for themselves via insurance, further penalised by the imposition of Insurance Premium Tax? Surely the most objectionable tax of them all? And not a single political party ever even talks about it, let alone promises to abolish it (or indeed to tax crowdfunding receipts, as obtained by the feckless, purely, of course, in the name of social equality). 

The typical excuse routinely proffered by insurance companies for increased premiums is that there have been lots of claims – Duh, isn’t that why people have insurance cover in the first place, and why these awful companies have spawned to offer their expensive insurance services? Do they honestly think it’s a one way street with them just banking the premiums but never having to pay out? When did anyone get a price reduction because there haven’t been as many claims that year? Why do motor insurers offer ‘no claims bonuses’ as routine, but other types of insurance generally don’t, in addition to playing the immoral game of offering better deals to new customers whilst heavily penalising their loyal longer standing customers? Why is it so bloody difficult, and time consuming, to even get a quote? Why are the questions so often loaded, in that the answer is seldom 100% definitely A or B, and this in turn always leads (me) to niggling doubts that in the event of a claim it will be disallowed (or made clear that a successful claim will only lead to a rocketing premium the following year, often outstripping the value of the claim)? 

I’m increasingly coming round to the libertarian conclusion that people should and indeed must stand, or even fall, solely on their own two feet (and bank balance). If all types of insurance continue to increase premiums year-on-year, with ever-upward spirals that even the energy companies must envy (they at least are monitored by the government and made to reduce their prices occasionally), there must surely come a point when ordinary people decide they’d rather eat, and reluctantly pay their extortionate mandatory Council Tax than fork out ludicrous sums for insurance in the naive hope that they are going to be covered if disaster strikes. 

The insurance racket is so lucrative that I’m surprised it was never nationalised, or that LibLabCon hasn’t decided it’s high time to get involved and further fleece the hated indigenous working and middle classes to provide more funds for the ‘climate emergency’, or for housing foreign non-paying guests in better conditions than many taxpayers and lower income pensioners. I suppose they are already involved via the Insurance Premium Tax, and it must be a nice little earner. 

What is the solution I hear you ask? I honestly don’t know – do you? 

Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.

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