Insurance is available for almost everything these days and the internet has helped fashion a highly transparent and competitive market place for domestic and global insurers. You are required by law to have certain insurance such as car insurance or medical insurance in some countries. Other insurance although optional in law is seen by most as a ‘must have’ such as home insurance or insurance for a person’s business interests or property belonging to their business. Then there is a third class of insurance focused mainly on the consumer market which is more specialised such as pet insurance, wedding insurance or insurance for extreme sports such as skiing. Either in the high street or on the internet, companies offer varying rates and excesses depending on various factors. There also exists a secondary market for the services of insurance brokers who act as agents buying products at the behest of their consumer or corporate clients. Underwriters are another group of agents operating in the insurance industry.
This is where the risks of any given insurance venture are calculated and the underwriter determines the correct pricing arrangement for the insurance services or whether the agreement is viable at all. To take the example of car insurance, the underwriter would take a detailed look at a driver’s accident record. Another example might be medical insurance where the patient’s sickness record is examined. The introduction of the internet greatly helps the insurance marke remain competitive and transparent but some customers are still finding themselves without cover in times of emergency. Extreme winter sports insurance demonstrates this well. The industry believes that over 50% of travelers to ski resorts are uninsured and although the other half do, only a quarter of them are actually insured for skiing and snowboarding which are classified by most insurers as ‘extreme sports’ and excluded from their plans. Many European travelers also think that their E111 is adequate to get them treatment but this is not the case at most resorts. A very recent example of how the market is changing is the furious competition on price between opposing travel insurance firms that has been in the main facilitated by the mass uptake and use of price comparison sites. In this country, we are legally obliged to have car insurance so everyone must purchase it. This causes pricing to be the chief competitive factor.
A recent negative example in the insurance market was when payment protection insurance policies (PPI’s) were discovered by the FSA to be negligent drafted or having been missold to many customers. This has generated a storm of legal claims against insurers or certain banks and firms actually being set up for the single purpose of acting as legal assistants so that customers can claim back any PPI that is covered by the FSA’s investigations. Compare travel insurance on the net to give the greatest deal. A further dubious insurance product is identity theft insurance that claims to refund the subject for losses on account of cyber fraud or identity theft. However most customers do not realise that the bank is in almost all instances liable for such acts.
Posts